Prologue

      “NOW’S YOUR SHOT with me, Zach. I say we get naked.”

      Exhausted, filthy, Zach Thomas still managed to lift his head and stare at Cristina. “What?”

      Just as filthy, she arched a come-hither brow streaked with soot, which made it difficult to take her seriously. So did the mustache of grime. “You and me,” she said. “Naked. What do you think?”

      He couldn’t help it; he laughed. He thought that she was crazy. They both wore their fire gear and were dragging their asses after several hours of intense firefighting. All around them, the stench of smoke and devastation still swirled in thick gray clouds, penetrating their outfits, their skin. Nothing about it felt sexy.

      “Hey, nobody laughs at my offer of sex and lives,” she told him. “Not even you, Officer Hottie.”

      When he grimaced at the nickname, she laughed. “You doing me tonight or not?”

      Sex as a relaxant worked—generally speaking, sex as anything worked—but Zach was so close to comatose he couldn’t have summoned the energy to pull her close, much less do anything about it once he got her that way. “I can’t.”

      “Now we both know that’s a lie.”

      Firefighting left some people exhilarated and pumped with adrenaline. Cristina was one of them. Normally he was, too, but they’d just lost a civilian—an innocent young kid—and he couldn’t get that out of his head. “I can’t,” he repeated.

      Cristina sighed. She was in her midtwenties, blond, and so pretty she could have passed for an actress playing a firefighter, but she was the real deal, as good as any guy on the squad. She was also tough-skinned, cynical and possessed a tongue that could lash a person dead without trying.

      He should know; he’d been on the wrong end of it plenty of times. So he braced himself, but she just sighed again. As sardonic and caustic as she could be, they really were friends. Twice they’d been friends with benefits, but it had been a while. She let it go, rolling her eyes at him, but moving off, leaving him alone.

      He stood there a moment more, surrounded by chaos, his gear weighing seventy-five pounds but feeling like three hundred as the radio on his hip squawked. Allan Stone, their new chief, was ordering everyone off the scene except the mop-up crew, who would stay through what was left of the night to make sure there were no flare-ups. Tommy Ramirez, the fire inspector, was already on scene, his job just beginning.

      Zach’s crew was slowly making their way to their respective rigs. He needed to move, as well, but his gut was screaming on this one—someone had set this blaze intentionally. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time he’d suspected arson when no one else had. Even more unfortunately, the last two times he’d thought so, he’d been reprimanded by Tommy for having an “authority” issue.

      He didn’t.

      Okay, maybe he had a slight authority issue, sometimes, but not tonight.

      He could ask Aidan what he thought but Zach knew what his firefighting partn and best friend would say. Grab a beer, a woman and a bed, in any order. And if Zach called Cristina back, he could knock out two of the three.