Chapter 7

The gear came back on a flatbed trailer four days later, from two neighboring departments, the ones the county board had contacted after reading Owen Pace's binder. Three SCBA bottles in each, twelve in all, all of them with serial numbers matching the ones in the delivery confirmations, all of them bolted to the truck bed of a loaner vehicle that had never been registered to either department.

Ruth Ann Covington logged each one by serial number into the department inventory book, a thick leather binder that she'd kept for nineteen years, and she underlined the new entries in red ink. The bottles had been checked by the state fire marshal's office, and they were sound, fit for service, a little dusty from the gravel lot but otherwise fine. They went into the equipment locker at the station, racked next to the turnout gear, three down and twelve more to go.

Owen Pace didn't come for the gear. He'd sent a truck from his yard in Hartwell County, four hours away, and the truck had brought the replacements for the damaged fittings, free of charge, with a note scrawled on the invoice in ballpoint: "For the woman who writes thank-you letters. — O.P."

Jenna had seen the note. She'd folded the invoice and put it in her satchel, next to the mail.

The county passed the purchase-order rule at the next board meeting, thirty days, filed with the county clerk's office, no exceptions, no initials in blue pen that didn't have a document trail behind them. Ruth Ann had typed the motion herself, and Harold Sikes had read it aloud, and it had passed four-to-one, the one no from a board member who said it was "more paperwork for honest people."

Jenna thought about that for a long time. She thought about it at the station, packing her turnout gear into the locker with her new rank stitched onto the sleeve of her jacket, the assistant chief's bugles, the responsibility that felt heavier than the gear itself.