“What’s your name, cadet?”
“Jasmine Epps, Captain.” She sat at attention. “If I graduate, I’ll be the first woman in my family to become a firefighter.” She lifted her chin. “And there are a lot of firefighters in the Epps family.”
Anyone who’d ever walked the long hallway down at headquarters recognized the name. But it didn’t matter. For her sake and safety, Sam needed her to understand that her name would not buy preferential treatment, and that included off-track interruptions and distractions.
He straightened to his full six-foot height. “I’m here for the same reason you are,” he said, addressing the entire class. “To whip you into mental and physical shape to become firefighters. And we only have three months to get the job done. You’re all equals in here, so I’m not going to waste time worrying about the balance of male versus female pronouns.” He met Epps’s eyes. “You okay with that, recruit?”
“Yessir, Captain Marshall.” She giggled quietly. “I’m surprised that you’re so well acquainted with parts of speech. I have a degree to teach English, you know, so I’ll have something to fall back on, just in case?”
Was she testing him, to see how much he’d let her get away with?
“That, people,” he announced, pointing at her, “was the second—and last—self-deprecating comment allowed in this room. From this night forward, we operate on the assumption that at the end of this session, everyone becomes a firefighter.” Sam paused, to give the rule time to sink in. “Got it?”
Following the drone of yessirs, he picked up his clipboard and sat on the corner of his desk.
“Now, then, since we already know that Epps here has a closet full of big shoes to fill, let’s find out who the rest of you are and why you’re here.”
While the guy in the far-right corner stated his name, age and marital status, Sam’s cell phone buzzed. It was Mark, owner of The Meetinghouse and founder of the Marks Brothers. Upon arriving in Nashville, Sam had chosen his hotel for the sole reason that it was walking distance from the club, rumored to be a favorite of agents and producers. Although Sam had put everything into his performance there, no contracts materialized. The next best thing happened, though, when Mark asked him to sub for ailing or vacationing band members. And they’d been rock-solid friends ever since.
He made a mental note to return the call after class. Sam went back to focusing on the students, the last of whom had just finished his introduction.
“Look around you, people. These are the guys who’ll have your back until the session ends...and maybe afterward, if you’re assigned to the same house. Match faces with names. Memorize voices. Anyone care to guess why?”
The guy with the ditzy girlfriend said, “Face-mask drills? Might be the only way to tell who’s who.”
Sam was about to agree and elaborate when Epps interrupted. “Your turn, Captain Marshall. What made you become a firefighter?”
He stifled a groan and wondered whether to set her straight now or explain his expectations privately, after class.
Arms crossed over his chest, Sam said, “I was born ’n’ bred on a Colorado ranch, and when I was sixteen, lightning started a brush fire. If not for some determined firefighters, we would have lost livestock, outbuildings, maybe even some ranch hands. I was impressed. Impressed enough that, first chance I got, I signed on with the volunteer fire department.”
One student wanted to know what had brought Sam to town; another asked if the Nashville department had recruited him from Colorado. How would it look if he admitted that dreams of signing a recording contract—not the city’s fire safety—had brought him to Tennessee?
Sam made a V of his first two fingers.
“One,” he began, “starting right now, in the interest of time and efficiency, we’ll do things like we did ’em in school. If you have a question or want to make a comment, raise your hand. Two—to answer your question—another thing that happened when I was sixteen was spending a week in Nashville with the family. I fell in love with the place and always said I’d come back.” He shrugged.
Epps raised her hand, and when Sam gave her the go-ahead, she asked him how he’d become a captain.
In every training session, one student stood out from the rest. The joker. The know-it-all. The always befuddled. And the chronic question-asker. Oh, yeah, he’d have to nip this in the bud, stat.
“I kept my ears open and my mouth shut.” He met every cadet’s eyes. “Same thing each of you will do...if you hope to advance in the ranks.”
Epps held up a forefinger and prepared to fire off another question, but Sam beat her to the punch.
“Pencils up, people. We have a lot of ground to cover, and I talk fast.”
He instructed them to turn to the blank pages at the back of their workbooks, and after an hour of questions and answers regarding the preliminary qualifications for rookie firefighters, he dismissed class early. He erased the whiteboard as they filed out of the room. How many would he lose between now and the last class? One, if he had to guess: Epps. Her attitude made it pretty clear that she believed her family name would buy certain considerations. The minute she figured out how wrong she was...
His phone buzzed again.
“You know where The Right Note is, right?” Mark asked.
“The diner at the corner of 19th and 20th?”
“How soon can you be there?”
“Ten minutes, give or take. Why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Bring an appetite. Supper’s on me.”
There had been a certain edge in Mark’s voice, Sam reflected as he pulled into the parking lot. Hopefully, it wasn’t because Eli had gone on another bender. “That’d be a sorry shame,” he muttered. Mark’s younger brother had been clean and sober nearly four years.
Mark was sipping a tall glass of sweet tea when Sam slid into the booth seat across from him. “I’ve been meaning to check this place out for years,” he said, glancing around. “Most attempts at imitating a fifties soda shop fall flat, but I like this. I like it a lot.”
Mark harrumphed. “Well, thank you, Frank Lloyd Wright. I’m sure the owner will appreciate your critique.”
Sam chuckled as a freckle-faced teen stepped up and slid two plastic-coated menus onto the red Formica table. “Sweet tea for you, too, sir?”
“Sure. But hold the lemon, okay?”
The kid hurried off, and Sam pretended to read the dinner listings. “So why am I here?”
“We haven’t even ordered yet. What’s your hurry? Got a hot date or somethin’?”
“Matter of fact, I do...with a stack of lesson plans.” Sam stretched out his sore leg and massaged the taut thigh muscle. Standing for extended periods always made it ache, but never more than when he paced the linoleum-over-concrete classroom floors. “Truth is, I’m curious. Every other time you’ve popped for a meal, I’ve had to work for it.” He closed the menu. “So what can I do for you this time?”
“Sheesh.” Mark shook his head. “You’re such a cynic.” He paused, then said, “I thought you were partial to blondes?”
The movements of a short-haired brunette had drawn Sam’s attention to the kitchen. “With my luck,” he said, averting his gaze, “she’ll turn around and give me an eyeful of hairy moles and missing teeth.”
Mark snickered, then pointed at Sam’s leg. “You keep that roadblock out there, you’re liable to find out. How long since the last surgery?”
Sam did the math in his head. He’d had two operations since the cave-in.