The Marine Next Door (16 page)

No argument about Travis being
their
son. No remorse about driving away and leaving a child all alone after dark. No indication that he even remembered the daughter he’d taken to keep Maggie from divorcing him, and then allowed to wander into traffic and be hit by that car.

Angel’s death had been the incentive to plot her escape from their marriage. Danny had punished her within an inch of her life the night he’d caught her on the elevator leaving him. Keeping Travis safe gave her the incentive to turn the doorknob. Years of training and therapy and healing gave Maggie the strength to believe Danny could never punish her again unless she let him.

“I’ll guard the door from the outside until Detective Fensom gets here.”

“I can see how ol’ Peg Leg would make a good babysitter.”

Maggie froze at the offhand comment. The logical decision to get away warred with the emotional need to put Danny in his place, to teach him a lesson, to best him somehow for saying something so crude about the man she was falling in love with.

Before that revelation could fully register, Maggie pulled the door shut to hear Danny’s next snide comment.

“But he ain’t all there, baby. He can’t give it to you the way I can.”

She
wasn’t the one who was going to be forced out of a room at her own workplace. Task force or not, Danny Wheeler had to go. Maggie stepped away from the door and faced him. “Get out. Unless you plan to confess to stalking me at my apartment and setting a fire in the basement, you need to leave.”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, baby.” His blue eyes hooded with an expression she supposed was his version of longing and regret. “We were once so good together, Mags. That’s all I want. Like I said, I’m sober now. I’m holdin’ down a job.” He leaned across the table and reached out to her. “On our wedding day you promised you’d love me forever. I haven’t forgotten those vows. I want to get back to the way things were when everything was right between us.”

Maggie ignored the outstretched hand. “Nothing was ever right, Danny. I was just too afraid to realize I could have something better.”

His fingers curled into a fist and he pushed to his feet. “And you think screwing old Sergeant Hopalong is better than being with me?”

How had she ever thought Danny Wheeler was hero material? Shaking her head, she turned for the door. “Leave, Danny. Now. Or I’ll call your P.O. and tell him you violated your restraining order. I’ll tell Detective Fensom that you had to reschedule your meeting.”

She never reached the doorknob. Danny grabbed her by the collar and swung her around to slam her up against the wall. “You uppity bitch.
I
tell you when we’re done talkin’.” His hand curled around her throat, and his hips butted up against hers, anchoring her in place with her toes barely touching the floor. But her hands were free. She clawed at his wrist but was rewarded with a tighter choke hold and his hot breath in her face. “I’m trying to be reasonable here. You won’t meet with me when I ask nicely, so we have to have this conversation any way I can.”

Rage spiraled up and twisted with the instinctive need to free herself.
Think. Take him down. Do it!

Danny was the same person he’d been ten years ago. Maggie was not.

Twisting her legs free and fighting for breath, Maggie thrust her palm up under his nose, hard enough to feel the pop inside. Danny instantly loosened his grip and grabbed his bloody nose. “You stupid, stupid—”

Maggie sucked in a reviving gulp of air, pulled her gun and put it to his throat, backing him up until he hit the table and the steel legs screeched across the floor. “Keep. Your. Hands. Off. Me.”

Just as quickly as the attack had come, Danny’s outburst subsided. His warm blood dripped on her fingers and he started to laugh. Holding one hand up in surrender, he ignored the threat of the gun pressing into his neck and pulled a bunch of tissues out of the box on the table to dab at his nose. “Man, how I love that Irish temper of yours. So much passion there. Nobody ever could control that fire but me.”

Control her? “Oh, my God.”

Stunned by how thoroughly she’d just lost it, horrified to think she’d sunk to the same gut-level violence that Danny thrived on, Maggie pulled her gun away from the imprint she’d left on his throat. She’d just earned a college degree that had trained her to outthink rather than just react to a suspect like this. And outthink him was exactly what she intended to do.

He was still laughing when she grabbed him by the front of his coveralls and put him facedown on the table. “Turn around, Danny. Hands behind your back. You have any weapons on you? Anything sharp or dangerous?” After patting down his pockets, she handcuffed his wrist to the table and pushed him back down into the chair. “You’re looking at assault on a police officer and violating a restraining order.”

He grinned up at her. “You need my help to solve this case, Mags. I have friends on the street. I hear things.”

“I don’t need anything from you.” She opened the door again, swung it wide so that any and everybody who walked down this hallway could see the man she’d handcuffed there. Not that she had any intention of staying. She met Danny’s smile with the sternest, strongest look she could manage. “Don’t you ever talk about John Murdock like that again. A woman would be lucky to have him love her. He’s more of a man than you’ll ever think about being.”

“John, is it? And you’re defending him? So it
is
personal.”

She shook her head, remembering how impossible it was to reason with him, and stepped out into the cleaner air of the hallway. “Goodbye, Danny.”

Lawrence Boyle was strolling down the hallway, peeking into each open doorway he walked past. Maggie sidestepped him when he approached, but he moved with her, blocking her path. “Ma’am?” He greeted her with a smile, with his hands held up in front of him to show he meant her no harm. “I was looking for Danny? The guy at the front desk said he was back here.”

“In there.”

“Whoa, dude, your nose.” Deciding her personal desire to leave Danny as far behind as possible was secondary to leaving two former felons together and unguarded, Maggie reluctantly waited against the wall opposite the open door. Danny’s boss turned his thick neck to ask her about the handcuffs. “Is he under arrest?”

Maggie hooked her thumbs into her utility belt and looked him straight in the eye. “You should go back to the waiting area, Mr. Boyle.” She eyed the front of his jumpsuit for a visitor’s tag. “You need to sign in.”

“But he said he was only going to be half an hour.” Boyle faced her fully to plead his case. “I’ve got my van parked downstairs. We’ve got a job to get to.”

Danny pulled out another tissue to wipe the blood from his face. “It’s okay. I may be a little longer, Lawrence. I have business to attend to.”

“Yeah, I know what kind of business you’re interested in.” Maggie put a hand on Boyle’s shoulder to keep him from entering the room. Although she felt him stiffen inside his coveralls at her silent command, thankfully, he was more willing to cooperate than Danny had been. With a nod, he promised to stay put and she released him. “Seriously, Danny? Breaking the law right here at the police station? What’s the good of me giving an ex-con a break and hiring you when you go and get yourself into trouble again? And over a woman?”

“She’s hot when she’s all fired up and in charge, isn’t she?” Danny seemed oblivious to his friend’s frustration and her revulsion at the worthless compliment. “Nobody else will ever love you the way I do, Mags.”

Lord, she hoped not.

“Everything okay here?” Maggie masked her sigh of relief at Nick Fensom’s arrival, and channeled the raw energy coursing through her into the white-knuckled grip she had on her belt. Danny and Lawrence Boyle might top Fensom in height, but there was a cagey, badgerlike intensity about the stocky detective that made both men sit up straight and retreat a step. “I thought I asked only one of you to come in for questioning. I don’t like a party.”

Maggie was glad for the backup, but prayed her relief wasn’t flooding her cheeks with heat. “Your appointment is in Interview Room D. Just so you know, Danny Wheeler is my ex-husband and coming within fifty yards of me is a violation of his restraining order.”

Nick eyed the duo in matching coveralls before dismissing her. “I’ll have a personal conversation with his parole officer, Sergeant. You get back to work.”

“You interested in her, too?” Danny taunted from inside the room. “Come on, Mags, you’re
my
wife, remember?”

Nick grabbed the door and flicked a thumb over his shoulder, warning Boyle out of his way. “You, out. You, shut up.” Turning his attention to Danny, Nick closed the door.

The squeaky soles of Lawrence Boyle’s shoes told Maggie he was hurrying to catch up with her. But she hadn’t expected him to latch on to her arm or for her swerving release to be so obvious. She clamped her mouth shut and waited for the bleach-haired exterminator to speak.

“Sorry, Mrs. Wheeler. When Danny said he was in a position to do the cops a favor, I thought it was a good thing. I didn’t know he was coming here to hit on you.”
Hit on her?
Oh, the irony of that cliché. But those bug eyes were round and dark and smiling with good intentions. So she clamped her mouth shut and let him finish. “But Danny’s a good worker. My business is expanding and I could really use his help. If Danny gets released again, I promise I’ll keep him in line.”

Impossible.

No one could keep Danny Wheeler in line.

No one could keep him out of her life.

Maggie saw the blood staining the sleeve of Boyle’s coveralls and knew it had come from her hand. She hid her palm against her thigh and changed course to head for the bathroom. “Excuse me, I need to clean up.”

Any extra confidence that the task force meeting had built inside her was gone. By the time she got inside the john, away from ex-felons and fellow cops, her knees were shaking so badly she had to grip the edge of the sink to keep them from collapsing.

After ten years Danny could still take her back to that place of insecurity and terror in an instant. She wasn’t ready to be a detective. She wasn’t ready to take a chance on a new relationship. She wasn’t in any shape to be much good to anyone else as long as Danny could get to her like this.

Because until she could get a handle on the fear, the anger and the paranoia and second-guessing they inspired, she wasn’t even any good to herself.

* * *

J
OHN’S BOOTS CRUNCHED
over the melted plastic and metal bits of the Wilson Irrigation Supply Company’s collapsed roof. He’d replaced his ball cap with a hard hat, and his ax and fire hose with a flashlight and a computerized clipboard.

He saw the sweep of Meghan Taylor’s flashlight coming up behind him before he heard her voice. “What does it look like to you, John?” She’d shed the heavy weight of her coat and breathing gear, but still wore her helmet, boots and overalls. The pale hair sticking to the sweat at her temples indicated she hadn’t been home to get any sleep since yesterday’s alarm. “Hazmat cleared the place of any toxic chemicals, but the rest of this place looks like a total wipe to me.”

He followed her glance up to the skeletal walls and twisted metal shelves of what had once been a storage facility for miles of irrigation pipe. He agreed with her danger assessment of the surviving structure. “What’s left is going to have to come down before they can do any rebuilding.”

“I know they’ve lost a ton of inventory with this fire, but if they’re going to claim it for insurance, I want to make sure it wasn’t deliberate.”

He nudged aside the mucky layer of water and ash with the toe of his boot and aimed his flashlight at the charred remains of an exposed wiring box. “I haven’t seen any pour patterns that indicate the fire was intentionally set. But we might have a case for old age and negligence. It’s a good thing your team turned off the gas feed or we’d be looking at an explosion instead of a slow burn. That junction box had probably been sparking and smoldering for days before it ignited.”

John took a couple more measurements and entered his notes while Meghan climbed through the warehouse’s wreckage with him. This warehouse was probably about the same 1930s vintage as The Corsican, the building where he and the Wheelers and an odd assortment of retirees and recluses lived. He wondered how many upgrades there had been as superficial and cosmetic as this place. While the fire department’s visit last night had given him a plausible excuse to check on his neighbors and put together a list of all the building’s recent mishaps and repairs that could be attributed to the decaying structure and quick, less-than-stellar fixes by Joe Standage, he was having less and less doubt that Maggie’s problems hadn’t been caused by age or accident.

“You okay?” Meghan asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

John dismissed her concern. “This just reminds me of another antique that needs to be fixed.”

“I heard you had a small fire in your building last night.”

“Yeah, a cigarette butt caught some old insulation wrapping on fire. We put it out with an extinguisher before the crew from Station 15 ever got there.”

“We?”
Meghan asked.

Two years ago—hell, even two days ago—John would have been more concerned about helping Meghan over a pile of rubble that had been knocked down to prevent it from collapsing on the firefighters who’d been fighting the blaze through the night. At the last second, he held out his hand to balance her on the climb down toward the exit. “A neighbor lady and I discovered it.”

“But you don’t think the fire was an accident?” He released her hand as soon as they hit solid ground.

“I’m beginning to think The Corsican is a death trap.”

Meghan scoffed at his doomsday pronouncement. “Come on, I know you. I know you checked the inspections and building codes before you ever moved into the place.”

She was right, he
had
made sure The Corsican met city safety codes before signing the lease. “Let me rephrase that. It’s not the building that has issues—it’s some freak who’s trying to bring the place down around us.”