The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Hall

The tape hissed, and the dispatcher spoke again.

"Say again, Engine 9?"

"Out of service," said my husband's voice. "Send Fourteen."

"Captain, that address is directly across from your station."

"Send Fourteen."

The recording clicked off.

Nobody in the hall moved.

Two hundred people in dress blues had just heard their captain turn down a fire across from his own bay doors.

At the side table, the engineer stood up from the laptop with his hands open at his sides.

He did not run.

In the front row, Dalton was on his feet.

"That's been cut," he said. "Somebody cut that."

His voice cracked on the last word.

"It wasn't cut, Cap."

A woman in the fourth row had stood up, with a lieutenant's bar on her collar.

I had never seen her before in my life.

"I was in the bay," she said. "Engine 9 stood there in turnouts for eleven minutes, and we watched that window."

"Sit down," a man muttered.

"I won't." Her voice shook, and it carried anyway. "Every time she calls, he goes. His own wedding night. The chief's retirement dinner. My kid's christening."

Imogen had risen too, with one hand at her throat.

"Dal," she said. "Dal, I can't get air."

Dalton turned to her.

He did it without thinking, with both hands already out, the way I had watched him do it for three years.

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