"Great."
She stepped back and let me park, but her eyes lingered on Larry. Maybe it was more than lust. Damn.
We parked. Larry undid his seat belt carefully, grimacing. I'd gotten the door for him at the gas station.
"You want me to get the door?"
He turned stiffly towards the door, trying to keep his upper body immobile. He stopped with his hand on the handle. His breath came in little gasps. "Yes, please."
Me, I'd have gotten the door myself, just from pure stubbornness. Larry really was the wiser of the two of us.
I held the door for him and offered him a hand. I pulled, he pushed with his legs, and we got him standing. He started to hunch from the pain, but that bent his back, which made the pain worse. He ended standing as straight as he could, leaning against the Jeep, trying to get his breath back. Pain will leave you breathless.
Reynolds was suddenly beside us. "What's wrong?"
"You tell her. I'll go talk to Dolph."
"Sure," Larry said, voice strained. He needed to be in bed, knocked out on painkillers. Maybe he wasn't that much smarter than me.
It wasn't hard to spot Dolph. Pete McKinnon was standing with them. It was like walking towards two small mountains.
Dolph's dark suit looked freshly pressed, white shirt crisp, tie knotted against the collar. He couldn't have been out in the heat long. Even Dolph sweats.
"Anita," he said.
"Dolph."
"Ms. Blake, nice to see you again," Pete McKinnon said.
I smiled. "Good to know someone's happy to see me."
If Dolph got the dig, he ignored it. "Everyone's waiting for you."
"Dolph always was a man of few words," Pete said.
I grinned at him. "Good to know it's nothing personal."
Dolph frowned at us. "If you two are through, we've got work to do."
Pete and I grinned at each other and followed Dolph across the wet street. I was happy to be back in my Nikes. I could walk as good as any of the men, in the right shoes.
A tall, thin fireman with a grey mustache watched me stride across the street. He was still wearing helmet and coat in the July heat. Four others had stripped down to T-shirts with just the rubbery-looking pants on. Someone had sprayed them down with a water. They looked like an ad for a beefcake wet T-shirt contest. They were drinking Gatorade and water like their lives depended on it.
"Did a Gatorade truck just roll by or is this some arcane post-fire ritual?" I asked.
Pete answered, "It's damned hot in a fire with full gear on. You dehydrate. Water to rehydrate and Gatorade for the electrolytes so you don't pass out from the heat."
"Ah," I said.
The fireman who'd been rolling up the hose came over to us. A delicate triangle of face peered out from under the helmet. Clear grey eyes met my gaze. There was a lift to the chin, a way that she held herself that was a challenge. I recognized the symptoms. I had my own mountain-sized chip on my shoulder. I felt like apologizing for assuming she was a man, but didn't. It would have been insulting.
Pete introduced me to the tall man. "This is Captain Fulton. He's Incident Commander on this site."
I offered my hand while he was still thinking about it. His hand was large, big-knuckled. He shook hands like he was afraid to squeeze too hard, and dropped contact as soon as he could. I bet that he was just pleased as punch to have a female fireperson on his unit.
He introduced the fireperson in question. "Corporal Tucker." She offered her hand.
She had a nice firm handshake and eye contact so sincere it was aggressive.