“It’s fine, Cinder,” he murmured.
It was not fine. It was, in fact, the very opposite of fine. Sam smiled and waved at the police officers like any normal person would do, but was met with nothing but confused, albeit slightly less hostile, glances.
“Did you just wave at those cops?”
Sam turned to find a Turtle Beach firefighter, one of his own, polishing the shiny red exterior of the pumper truck sitting just outside the apparatus bay.
“I did,” he said.
“Yeah, we don’t do that.” The other firefighter shook his head. “Especially now.”
Sam didn’t even know where to start. There was so much to unpack here, he was at a loss. “We don’t do what, exactly? Interact with fellow first responders?”
The fireman let out a snort of laughter. “Not when they’re cops. Come winter and fall, maybe, but not now.”
Sam glanced up and down the quaint street where eager beachcombers loaded down with collapsible chairs, sun umbrellas, and colorful towels were already making the trek from the narrow rows of beach cottages over the dunes toward the sea. “Tourist season?”
“What? No. Softball season.” The fireman shook his head. “You really are new here, aren’t you?”
“Sam Nash.” Sam held out his hand.
“Griff Martin. Welcome to TBFD.” Griff shook Sam’s hand and then glanced down at Cinder, sitting in a polite stay position at Sam’s feet. Apparently, the sight of a firefighter waving at a pair of police officers had been so much of a novelty that Griff had yet to notice the spotted dog. “Whoa. First day on the job, and you’ve somehow managed to dognap Violet March’s Dalmatian. Maybe you know more about softball season than I realized.”
Sam’s gut clenched. Not again. “This dog doesn’t belong to Violet March. She belongs to me.”
Griff shot him an exaggerated wink. “Sure she does.”
“I’m dead serious.”
Griff’s face split into a wide grin. “I like you, man. You’re funny, but everyone knows Sprinkles is the only Dalmatian in town.”
Sam’s first day in Turtle Beach was beginning to feel like the movie Groundhog Day. And not in a good way. He glanced across the street toward the police headquarters, preparing himself to try and talk his way out of another arrest for canine-related crimes.
Griff shoved his hands in the pockets of his TBFD-issued cargo pants and leaned a little closer—close enough for Sam to catch a whiff of coffee on his breath. “Stealing the police department’s unofficial mascot is a baller move, but just so you know, the police chief’s daughter is off-limits. You should return Sprinkles to wherever you found her. Chief Murray’s orders: we can’t mess with Violet—particularly not after what happened last year. Things went a bit too far.”
Again, so much to unpack. But against all odds, Sam was suddenly less concerned about Cinder’s mistaken identity than he was about Violet March and whatever misfortune she’d encountered last year, seemingly at the hands of a firefighter.
He thought about her tousled mermaid hair and the foamy ocean waves swirling at her feet and, for the first time, wondered if he’d mistaken the look in her luminous blue-green eyes for fury when in fact it had been something else—vulnerability.
Nope, she’d been livid. Just maybe not as unhinged as he’d previously thought.
Don’t ask. Do. Not. It’s none of your concern.
“What happened to her?” he said.
Damn it, he’d asked.
But before Griff could clue him in, the man who’d conducted Sam’s Zoom interview last month came striding toward them. His welcoming smile faded as his gaze trailed from Sam’s face all the way down Cinder’s leash to the Dalmatian’s tail, sweeping the pavement in a happy wag.
Sam knew what was coming, but frustration seethed from his every pore nonetheless.
“What are you doing with Violet March’s dog?” Chief Murray crossed his big, beefy arms as he stared down at Cinder.
“This isn’t Sprinkles,” Sam said wearily. Was it possible to scrub the spots off a Dalmatian? Or maybe connect them like a giant dot-to-dot puzzle? Anything to make Cinder look less like Sprinkles and put an end to the Dalmatian speculation.
“This is Cinder.” The dog’s ears perked up at the mention of her name. “She’s a fire safety dog. She’s trained to accompany me on inspections and to demonstrate fire safety techniques during presentations.”
A long, awkward pause followed. The only sounds Sam heard were Cinder’s soft pants and the ocean roaring in the distance. He missed the rattle of the L train, the moaning stops and starts of city buses, and the grind of morning traffic. The constant hum of Chicago’s street noises were in his blood, and he felt adrift without it—yet another thing about his move he hadn’t anticipated. After all, people paid good money to hear waves crashing against the shore on apps for their phones or sound systems. Not Sam, per se, but people.
Normal people…people who didn’t wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, followed by three torturous hours of staring at the ceiling, immune to the calming effects of the nearby sea.
“Huh,” both Griff and Chief Murray said after a beat, as if Sam’s description of Cinder’s duties had been spoken in some kind of foreign language.
Sam’s head pounded. He had a sudden craving for deep dish Chicago-style pizza, the world’s best migraine cure.
“So this dog is like your partner?” Chief Murray bent to take a closer look at Cinder.
“Yes.” They’d covered this already in Sam’s interview. He was sure of it. He wouldn’t have packed up and moved to North Carolina without telling his new chief about his dog. Cinder was half the reason Sam had been able to make the change from fighting fires to seeking a job as a fire marshal.
The job offer from TBFD had been a godsend. After Chief Murray’s email had arrived, Sam had been too busy counting his lucky stars to wonder why such a small department needed to add a full-time fire marshal to its roster. As crazy as things seemed, they were beginning to make sense.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m not really interested in playing softball,” Sam said.
He was here to do a job, not to become involved with the community. Besides, it had been a long time since Sam had held a bat in his hands. Nearly a year.
Chief Murray straightened, regarding Sam through narrowed eyes.
“Dude.” Griff shook his head. “Participation in the summer softball tournament against the police force is mandatory.”
Sam sighed. This place was beyond nuts. He should have turned tail and run back when he’d almost been arrested. “Mandatory? Doesn’t that contradict the very nature of extracurricular activities?”