First Due

Twenty-eight years taught Hank Vargo which fires he can walk into -- and which ones will take everything he has. At fifty-two, the Detroit fire captain is grieving, sleeping in ninety-minute increments, and holding Engine 8 together with habit and stubbornness. Then the memo comes: his house is on a closure list.

George Zamora is forty, bright as a struck match, and the arson investigator working the string of vacant fires in Hank's district. Three torched buildings in six weeks, all overnig...