POV: Evelyn

Smoke reached the basement before the flames did.

It slid through the ceiling vent in a thin black ribbon while June was still reaching for the alarm panel. Above us, metal crashed. Someone shouted that the east bay was burning.

Silas closed Celene's locker and put himself between it and the stairs.

“Take the records out the rear exit.”

“There is no rear exit,” June said. “That is why no one finds the basement.”

The lights went out.

Red emergency strips flickered along the floor. Nora swore with impressive energy for a woman holding knitting needles.

I grabbed the first two ledgers and thrust them at her. “Where is the fire suppression?”

“Manual doors upstairs. Water line beside the compressor.”

The answer bothered me.

Repair shops did not burn like houses. Fuel changed everything. Solvents changed everything. The Vale ledgers had listed storage expenses in their own code, but one line on the current office inventory had caught my eye when June made us sign in: auxiliary heating oil, twelve hundred gallons, east exterior tank.

The fire was in the east bay.

“Where does the tank feed enter?”

June stared at me.

“Now, June.”

“Through the compressor room.”

A sharp pop sounded overhead.

Silas caught my shoulders. “You stay below.”

“If that line ruptures, below becomes an oven.”

His jaw set. The Alpha in him wanted to order me into the safest corner he could imagine. The man who knew me looked at the ledgers in my hands and changed the order before it became words.

“Show me.”

We climbed into heat.

Flames crawled along a spilled trail beneath the east lift. A mechanic dragged a hose from the wall while another fought with the pressure valve. The stream coughed once and died.

Not an accident.

The public bay door had dropped halfway, trapping smoke under the roof. Through the gap, I saw a man in gray coveralls running toward a white service van.

Silas whistled, one hard note.

Outside, engines answered.

Ronan's motorcycle cut across the driveway. Briar's unmarked car blocked the road. The fleeing man reversed, struck a stack of tires, and stalled.

“Two more inside!” June shouted.

A second attacker came from behind the parts cage with a pry bar. Silas met him before I understood what I was seeing. He caught the man's wrist, drove him face-first against the cage, and twisted until the bar clanged to the floor.

The attacker's other hand went for his belt.

Silas slammed him down.

“Try it,” he said.

The man's hand stopped.

I ran for the compressor room. June followed, grabbed a wheel valve painted yellow, and turned it. It refused to move.

“They jammed it.”

The pipe vibrated beneath my palm. Heat was already traveling through the metal.

I looked at the inventory clipboard mounted beside the door. Vale Repairs bought fuel from two suppliers. The main tank fed the furnace, but the line marked RETURN had been installed when the building still serviced diesel farm equipment.

“Where does the return line go?”

“Waste reservoir.”

“Capacity?”

“Eight hundred gallons.”

“Empty?”

“Drained Friday.”

I pointed. “Open that one. Shut the pump breaker first.”

June did not ask why an accountant was giving orders in her own burning shop. She hit the breaker. I pulled the red lever while she opened the return valve with both hands. The pipe hammered. Heating oil diverted away from the fire wall and began draining into the buried reservoir.

The whine beneath the floor faded.

“Fire doors!” June yelled.

Her mechanics pulled two hanging chains. Steel curtains dropped between bays, starving the flames and separating the paint cabinet from the heat. The fire shrank from a charging animal to something we could fight.

Then a gloved arm hooked around my throat.

The third attacker had been hiding behind the compressor.

He dragged me backward, a knife pressed beneath my jaw.

“Locker key,” he said into my ear.

Silas appeared in the doorway.

His eyes were no longer human.

Gold flooded the irises. His shoulders widened beneath his shirt, and a growl rolled through the room so low the loose tools trembled against the wall.

The blade pressed harder.

“Call him off.”

I met Silas's gaze.

He was waiting.

Every violent instinct in him was aimed at the man behind me, yet he waited for my signal because one uncontrolled step could open my throat.

I let the ledger slip from my left hand.

The attacker glanced down.

I drove my heel into his knee and dropped my weight. The blade scratched my skin. Silas crossed the room before the man recovered. One hand closed around the attacker's knife wrist; the other caught his throat.