Daniel’s mouth tightened slightly.
That part, he had not known.
Evan reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
His fingers moved quickly.
Victoria watched him search before turning the screen toward Daniel.
The image was old and blurry.
Someone had taken it from a distance.
Smoke dominated the background.
Emergency lights washed the road in red.
Near the edge of the frame stood a man beside an old pickup, his shirt dark with soot.
The face was difficult to make out.
But Daniel recognized his truck.
Evan enlarged the image.
“I kept this,” he said.
Daniel stared at it.
“You could barely see me.”
“I could see enough.”
Victoria covered her mouth with one hand.
Evan looked at her.
“I told you I remembered him.”
Victoria’s eyes closed.
The sentence carried history Daniel had not been there to hear.
When she opened them again, her confidence had disappeared.
“You used to say you remembered a man talking to you,” she said.
“I did remember.”
“I thought it was one of the firefighters.”
“I told you he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”
Victoria looked down.
Daniel understood the expression now.
It was the same one Evan had worn earlier when she dismissed what he knew about the sound in the SUV.
She had not believed him then either.
Evan turned back toward Daniel.
“I remember your hands.”
Daniel instinctively looked down at them.
Scarred knuckles.
Oil in the lines of his skin despite years of scrubbing.
A small fresh cut near one thumb from a stubborn hose clamp that morning.
“You kept one hand over the side of my face,” Evan continued, “so I wouldn’t look back.”
Daniel remembered that too.
Not as heroism.
As instinct.
The boy had been screaming when he saw the fire climbing higher.
Daniel had turned his head away and held him there until the paramedics arrived.
Victoria stood.
Her eyes were wet now, but Daniel did not rescue her from the discomfort.
She walked toward him.
“I laughed at you.”
Daniel said nothing.
“I walked into your business, looked around for ten seconds, and laughed.”
“Yes.”
The word was not cruel.
That made it worse.
Victoria’s jaw tightened.
“I treated you like you were beneath me.”
Daniel set the Escalade keys on the counter.
“You didn’t know me.”
