They sat in comfortable silence, the cafe's ambient noise washing around them. Lena realized she'd been holding her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Erin to say something that would reignite their argument. Instead, the fire marshal seemed content to let the moment exist.
"Your coffee's getting cold," Erin observed, nodding toward the mug Lena had forgotten she was holding.
Lena glanced down, surprised to find the ceramic had cooled completely in her hands. "So is yours."
"Worth it for the conversation." Erin closed her folder and stood to leave, gathering her things with the same efficiency she'd shown during the inspection.
Something in her tone made Lena look up sharply, searching for hidden meaning. But Erin's expression remained professionally neutral, giving nothing away. Lena found herself watching the fire marshal's retreat, noting the confident stride and the way other cafe patrons looked up as she passed.
The purple door swung shut behind her, and Lena sat alone with her cold coffee, reconsidering her first impression of Fire Marshal Erin Vance.
Lavender appeared at the table, collecting empty mugs with exaggerated innocence. “Productive meeting?”
“It was a professional consultation,” Lena said firmly.
“Of course it was.” Lavender’s smile suggested she wasn’t fooled for a moment. “Same thing Diana used to say about me.”
Lena left a tip on the table and headed for the parking lot, new questions circling in her mind. Questions she wasn’t quite ready to answer.
The drive back home through Phoenix Ridge's familiar streets should've been routine, the kind of autopilot that let Lena process her day and plan next steps. Instead, she found herself taking the long way home with the windows down despite the evening chill, trying to make sense of what had just happened at Lavender's.
The case files were tucked away in her canvas bag that was on the passenger seat, but her mind kept drifting to that conversation with Erin. To the technical diagrams drawn inneat handwriting and the way the fire marshal had connected building vulnerabilities to the arsonist's target selection.
She'd gone to Lavender's expecting to assess the space and maybe exchange professional courtesies. She'd stayed over an hour having the kind of analytical discussion she usually reserved for experienced detectives.
Lena stopped at a red light and caught her reflection in the side mirror: same sharp features, same controlled expression she'd worn for years. So why did she feel like her investigative approach had been turned sideways?
The fire marshal had challenged her methods, but not in the usual way. Not with uninformed criticism or bureaucratic procedure, but with actual analysis that related to the case. With pattern recognition applied to building safety and evidence-based conclusions about how their arsonist operated.
We're trying to accomplish the same thing.
The light turned green. Lena accelerated through the intersection, muscle memory guiding her toward home while her thoughts circled back to that moment of professional acknowledgment. She'd built her career on being thorough and seeing angles other people missed. But tonight, someone else had shown her a perspective she'd overlooked entirely.
Her phone buzzed against the center console—a text from Julia checking if the visit to Lavender's had been productive. Lena glanced at it, then back at the road. Productive was a complicated way to put it. Educational, definitely.
Professional consultation, she'd told Lavender. And that's what it had been, even if the consultation had revealed gaps in her own approach she wasn't entirely comfortable acknowledging.
She'd spent years perfecting her investigative methods, trusting her instincts and experience to guide her cases. But sitting in that cafe, watching Erin work with the same analyticalintensity she brought to her own cases, Lena had to admit there might be value in perspectives she'd previously dismissed.
Lena pulled into her driveway and sat for a moment, engine ticking as it cooled in the evening air. She had reports to write, evidence to analyze, and an arsonist to catch using every available resource—including, apparently, fire science expertise she'd been too stubborn to consider earlier.
She grabbed her canvas bag and headed inside, already thinking about how building vulnerability assessments might complement her criminal profile. It made investigative sense, even if it meant acknowledging she didn't have all the answers.
2
The alarm cut through Erin’s sleep like a blade, sharp and unforgiving in the pre-dawn darkness. She was alert before her feet hit the cold hardwood floor, muscle memory guiding her through the routine she’d perfected over years of emergency calls. Phone in hand, gear bag by the door, keys exactly where she’d left them on the entry table.
It had been four days since the inspection at Lavender’s Cafe. Four days since Detective Soto had looked at her like she was playing dress-up in someone else’s job.
She’d spent those four days conducting other inspections around Phoenix Ridge, half-hoping to run into Lena again and half-grateful she hadn’t. The memory of their argument in Lavender’s backroom sat uncomfortably in her chest—the way Lena had dismissed her methods then seemed genuinely surprised when Erin’s analysis proved useful. As if competence from someone her age was unexpected.
Erin pushed the thought away as she pulled on her gear, focusing instead on the radio chatter crackling through her phone: small fire, beachside community center near the cliffs, possible arson. The words sent a familiar spike of adrenalinethrough her system, the kind that had nothing to do with an attractive detective and everything to do with protecting people’s lives.
Erin grabbed her travel mug from the counter, still hot from the coffeemaker’s timer, and headed for the door. Her truck started on the first try, reliable as always, and she pulled out of her apartment complex into Phoenix Ridge’s empty morning streets.
The radio gave her preliminary details as she drove: the beachside community center was small, housed in a converted Victorian cottage that served Phoenix Ridge’s LGBTQ+ youth programs, art therapy, and support groups. The kind of place that mattered more than its modest size suggested.
Erin’s grip tightened on the steering wheel as she wound through Phoenix Ridge’s familiar streets toward the coast. Morning fog rolled in from the ocean, softening the edges of everything and muffling the sound until the world felt wrapped in gray cotton. Through it, she could smell smoke, not the clean scent or woodfires or barbecues but something sharper.
