Everyone moved fast.
Half a dozen extinguishers came off the walls within seconds, and the kitchen filled with the sharp hiss of compressed powder cutting through smoke. The white cloud spread thick and fast, blanketing the fire before it could find its next foothold. Station by station, the flames pulled back. By the time the last extinguisher ran dry, the fire was out.
Lily set hers down and turned to Serena, who was standing very still with all the color gone from her face.
"Ms. Park — are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Serena waved a hand. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I'm fine."
She wasn't, quite. Her hands were still doing something they weren't supposed to be doing, and the image of what this kitchen could have looked like thirty seconds later was sitting right behind her eyes and wouldn't move.
Over a hundred people were eating in the dining room right now. Gas lines ran the length of this kitchen. She had been standing ten feet from the ignition point.
She breathed carefully through the thought and let it settle.
The new manager — his name was Nathan, promoted from deputy two days ago after Marcus was let go — appeared at her elbow looking genuinely rattled.
"Ms. Park, we still have seven tables waiting on food. What do you want to do?"
Serena turned to the head chef, a steady man named Victor who had already started walking the line, assessing the damage.
"Victor — how long to get back up and running?"
Victor moved quickly through the space, checked the affected stations, and looked back at her.
"Ten minutes. It looks worse than it is. Quick cleanup and we're back."
"Okay." Serena straightened. "Nathan, Lily — come with me. We'll go talk to the tables ourselves. Victor, you have the kitchen. And make sure everyone understands — what happened in here tonight stays in here."
Victor nodded without hesitation. He understood exactly what was at stake. Word of a kitchen fire at Rosewood, even a contained one, would do damage that no amount of good press could fully undo.
"Not a word," he said. "You have my word."
---
Serena spent the next ten minutes moving table to table with Nathan and Lily, apologizing personally for the delay, citing an unexpected situation in the kitchen, promising it would be resolved within minutes. The regulars recognized her and were gracious about it. Nobody made a scene.
By the time service resumed, the dining room had settled back into its normal rhythm. Serena found an empty table near the window, sat down heavily, and held out her hand.
Lily put a glass of red wine in it before she'd finished the gesture.
Serena took a long sip.
"If Cole hadn't said something last night," Lily said quietly, sitting down across from her, "we would not have had those extinguishers. Not one of Marcus's would have worked."
"I know."
"The gas lines—"
"I know, Lily."
They both sat with that for a moment.
"We need to find him," Lily said. "Properly thank him. Not just dinner — actually reach out and say what he did."
Serena set her glass down.
"I didn't get his number last night." She said it with a short, quiet laugh at herself. She had never once in her life proactively asked a man for his contact information — it simply hadn't been necessary. Men found ways to reach her. She had never needed to go the other direction. "I didn't even think to ask."
"Crestfield isn't that big," Lily offered.
"No, it isn't." Serena was already reaching for her phone. She dialed a number she knew by heart.
"Uncle Warren. I need a favor." A pause. "I'm looking for someone. His name is Cole Harmon — probably a recent college graduate, early twenties. I don't have much else, but I can send you a photo."
She hung up and turned to Lily.
"Pull last night's security footage. Get me a clear frame of his face and send it to my phone."
"On it." Lily was already up.
Serena leaned back in her chair and looked out the window at the street below. The city moved past in its ordinary Saturday night way, completely unaware of what had almost happened three floors above it.
She kept turning it over.
Cole had warned her about the extinguishers the night before — specifically, almost urgently. And then tonight, a fire. If the timing had shifted by even a few hours in either direction, if the replacement extinguishers from the Whitmore warehouse had arrived even slightly later—
How had he known?
It could be coincidence. Some people had sharp eyes for safety hazards, noticed things others walked past. But the specificity of it bothered her. He hadn't said *you should check your safety equipment.* He had said *tonight.* He had pushed back when she said tomorrow.
She didn't have an answer. She filed it away and decided she would ask him directly when she found him.
---
In his room at Elmwood, the sound of Cole's typing stopped.
He looked at the clock in the corner of his screen. Just past nine.
Three hours. Nearly ten thousand words. He saved the file, uploaded the new chapters to Starfall Reads, and pushed back from the desk with a long stretch that ran all the way from his lower back up through his shoulders.
Then he opened the local Crestfield news feed and started refreshing.
In his previous life, by this point in the evening, the story would already be running — fire at Rosewood, explosion, casualties, the whole thing unfolding in real time across every local outlet. It would have been the only story for days.
He refreshed again.
Nothing.
No fire. No explosion. No breaking news out of downtown.
Cole sat back and felt something in his chest ease. A quiet, private relief that didn't need anyone else to see it.
He had done what he could. He couldn't have explained how he knew without explaining things that couldn't be explained. He had said enough, and Serena had listened, and tonight the kitchen at Rosewood had burned for thirty seconds instead of burning the whole building down.
He put the laptop to sleep and picked up his phone from the desk.
A notification was waiting. The little icon he recognized immediately — a messaging app he hadn't used much in his previous life and had barely thought about since his rebirth.
He opened it.
The message was from Vanessa Vale.
*Cole. What are you up to right now?*
His jaw tightened.
He stared at the message for a long moment.