“Saw who?”

“Inside the building. Just inside the window. A boy.”

I studied the windows. I couldn’t see anything. “I don’t see anyone,” I said.

He looked over to Owen. “You saw him, right, rookie?”

Owen shook his head.

But DeStasio was already pulling on his bunker coat. “Let’s get moving.”

I started to get a bad feeling. “You want to go in?”

“There’s a child in there,” DeStasio said, like, Duh.

“We don’t have the right equipment,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to wait for backup.”

Something flashed over DeStasio’s face then—some kind of rage that I had never seen before. If I had to guess, I would say maybe being told he “had” to do something by a nonranking member of his crew—and a female, at that—didn’t sit too well with him. It’s also possible that he sensed I was doubting him about the child. I’d checked those windows, and I hadn’t seen anything—and why would a kid be inside a grocery store at this hour of the morning? It didn’t add up.

“What we have to do,” DeStasio said, in a voice tight with outrage, “is get in there. Right now!”

“We’ve got orders to stay out,” I said. “Backup will be here in ten minutes.”

“No,” DeStasio said. “We don’t have time to wait.”

Here was part of the problem: DeStasio, as he was constantly reminding me, had a lot more years in the department than I did. He was senior to me in every way—except one. I was a fully trained paramedic, and he was only an EMT.

Technically, even though he was the senior crew member, that made me the ranking medic on the scene.

Which might also account for some of that rage.

DeStasio turned toward Owen. “Get your mask on. We’re going in.”

“We have orders to stay out!” I said.

DeStasio leaned in, his eyes wild and vicious. “Radio the captain.”

So I tried.

I grabbed my handheld and fired it up. “Captain,” I said, “we’ve got a possible child trapped in the building. Over.”

I waited for a reply, but I could only hear static.

I tried again. “Captain, requesting permission to enter the structure and check for victims. Over.”

This time, his radio crackled to life, but it was half static and only half words. I couldn’t tell what he’d said—and, in truth, it sounded more like I was overhearing him than receiving a message from him.

I looked at DeStasio. “I am not reading you, Captain,” I said into the radio. “Please repeat. Over.”

Another long blast of static. Could he read me?

“That’s it,” DeStasio said. “We’re going in.”

“We have orders not to go in,” I said.

“Ask me if I care.”

“That’s insubordination,” I said.

“Tell that to the dying boy inside.”

DeStasio was already moving toward the building. He grabbed Owen as he went and pulled him along. Owen, of course, would have no choice but to follow DeStasio’s orders. That’s the essence of the paramilitary structure. DeStasio may have ranked below me, but Owen ranked well below us both.

“We have orders to stay out!” I shouted, again, following.

“That’s not what I just heard.”

“You heard static!” I said.

“We always go in. If there’s even a chance someone’s inside, we go in.”

“Do not go in there!” I shouted. I ran past them and put my body between DeStasio and the entrance, standing my ground.

But there was that rage again. DeStasio came at me, shouting, his face red, spit collecting at the edges of his mouth.

I’d never heard DeStasio shout.

“I’ve been with this department longer than you’ve been alive!” he said, his face like a mask of agony. “When I started working with this captain, you were in diapers! We’ve fought more fires together than anybody can count! Don’t tell me what we need to do! I know what to do! I could follow our captain’s orders in my sleep! There’s a boy in that building! We don’t have time to wait! ‘To Protect and Serve!’ You want me to leave that little boy to burn to death, but I won’t do it!”

“You can’t go in there!” I shouted.

“You can’t stop me!” He smacked Owen on the shoulder. “Rookie, come on.”

In slo-mo, I watched as the rookie started to follow him.

“Rookie!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

He turned and shook his head. “It’s a deathtrap in there.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, raising my hands like, What the hell? “It’s a deathtrap in there.”

Owen shook his head, dead serious. “Can’t let him go in alone.”

Shit.

I checked the road for any sight of backup on the way. Still nothing.

And that’s when I realized the crux of it. The rookie wasn’t going to let DeStasio go in without him, and I wasn’t going to let the rookie go in without me.

This was happening.

We were all doomed.

I tied a guide rope to a pole near the entrance, then turned on our PASS safety devices and secured our masks and air tanks. Sometimes, in a well-vented structure, you don’t have to turn on your air right away—but this place was the opposite of well vented. I opened the valve on DeStasio’s tank, DeStasio opened up Owen’s, and Owen opened mine.

Time for a quick reminder. “Rookie,” I said, “what’s the average time the air in a thirty-minute canister lasts in a working fire?”

“Fifteen-point-six minutes,” Owen answered.

“Very good,” I said, tugging on the guide rope to make sure it was secure. “At the eight-minute mark, we come back out for new canisters—no exceptions. Even if your low-air alarm isn’t going off yet. Even if DeStasio won’t come with you. I am not letting you die today, got it?”

The rookie nodded.

I glared at the back of DeStasio’s helmet. “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done at a fire,” I said to Owen. “Stay at the perimeter of the building on the front wall. Stay in physical and verbal contact with me at all times. And whatever you do, do not get off the guide rope.”

We might be okay.

Maybe.

We pushed open the sliding doors. Smoke came billowing out like from a dragon’s mouth.

When you’re working inside a burning structure, you can’t expect to be able to see. The smoke is thick and dark and fills up the rooms. If the windows blow out, sometimes the smoke will dissipate, and if you stay low, you’ll have some visibility—but there are no guarantees, and you find your way by feel. That’s a particular skill: the ability to visualize rooms and construct mental floor plans in totally unfamiliar spaces without using your eyes. There’s definitely a spatial relationships component.

Also a not-freaking-the-hell-out component.

The heat pushes you down anyway, and you sweep the rooms on all fours, keeping contact with the walls. In residential structures, you have to check under beds and in closets, because when kids are scared they tend to hide under furniture and in toy boxes or laundry hampers. But where would a kid hide in a grocery store? Where would we even start looking?