The Marine Next Door (17 page)

“Why? What else has happened?”

It felt like a violation of trust to share any of the sick details about Maggie’s disastrous marriage, even with a longtime friend like Meghan Taylor. “It’s personal,” was the only explanation he offered. “I need to do a little more poking around before I figure out exactly what’s going on there.”

He was surprised at how readily Meghan accepted his answer, and at how vehement she was about supporting his concern. “If you need anything, you put my number on speed dial. Or call the station. I haven’t forgotten how you were there for me when that arsonist was setting fires in Kansas City, and I seemed to be in the middle of all of them.”

“Gideon Taylor was there for you,” John corrected her.

“The man I love, my boys and my best friend—” she squeezed his arm to emphasize his importance on that list “—were there for me. That’s how I got through it, John. I owe you.” She patted his arm and moved on ahead of him. “You call, whether it’s another fire or anything else. We’ll do whatever we can to help.”

“Thanks, boss. I’ll keep that in mind.”

By mutual consent, they changed direction and headed outside to where Dean Murphy and the rest of the Station 23 crew were rolling up hoses and stowing gear. Before they hit asphalt and the jokes and shouts of the crew, Meghan stopped in front of him and turned. “I’ve been worried about you, John. You seem different. A heck of a lot more introspective. And here I thought it was me, that I made coming back to work uncomfortable for you. But if you’ve got something you’re dealing with, maybe some issue with this neighbor lady you mentioned, then I won’t worry so much. Unless you need me to. I don’t make you uncomfortable anymore, do I?”

John looked down into the eyes of a friend. And even though there were certainly hints of regret and might-have-beens lingering inside him, the sharp pangs of unrequited love had truly dulled. His thoughts were centered on another woman now. One who just might need him the way he was beginning to need her and her son.

“No.” The answer felt more honest than he’d expected.

“Yo, Big John!” John groaned at the taunt from Dean. “You know you miss this. Why don’t you get your old bones on over here and show us you can still haul all this equipment.”

“You’re just trying to get out of work, Dean. I
am
old enough to be smarter than you and have your games figured out.”

The younger man laughed and took a few more good-natured gibes from the rest of the crew before they all went back to finishing up the job at hand.

“You
do
miss it, don’t you,” Meghan observed. “Being in the middle of the action?”

“I get paid more than he does, and my muscles won’t ache at the end of the day.” Not from lifting the heavy hoses and gear at any rate. “Besides, I’ve seen more
action
than any man needs to.”

“John, are you happy to be home?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?

Leaving it unanswered, he opened the door of his truck and tossed his hard hat and clipboard inside. “I’d better get back to the station and get my report written up. My boss is a real stickler for gettin’ the job done fast and right.”

Meghan smiled at the friendly jab but didn’t back away from her concern. “If you need more time—to recover from your injuries or adjust to the new job or get better acquainted with the neighbor lady—”

“Are you matchmaking?”

“Do I need to?”

He climbed inside behind the wheel. “I’ll see you back at the station.”

Chapter Nine

A couple hours later, John was sitting in his office, pulling up the layout of the Wilson warehouse on his computer to add to his KCFD report. Although he’d bagged up some of the toasted wiring to be analyzed at the state fire lab, his preliminary findings were that the fire was accidental.

He brushed his fingertip over the top of the mouse and eyed the public building links on the screen in front of him. How hard would it be to pull up the blueprints on The Corsican—to double-check what should be in that building compared to what was actually there, and find out who had access to the building to perform inspections or maintenance on phone lines and elevator wires? Just how far should he go, following his instincts about there being something very wrong about the old building? Did one kiss, battling a fire together and a late-night heart-to-heart make him Maggie Wheeler’s protector? How much of the lurking sense of pending danger surrounding Maggie was him trusting his gut? And how much was just a lost man without a purpose seeing enemies where none existed?

And was there something to Meghan’s teasing about the
neighbor lady?
Was his brain still so fogged up with war and loss and recovery that he was missing something his station captain could see that he couldn’t?

A soft knock at his door diverted his attention. “John?” Meghan pushed open the door. “You have a visitor.”

“I do?”

Meghan stepped aside to usher in Maggie Wheeler. In that moment, John knew that his feelings for his boss were a thing of the past. He stood as the red-haired cop stepped into his office. Meghan’s sunny blond hair faded into a pleasant memory as his pulse kicked into overdrive at the impact of Maggie’s copper-haired beauty.

But the pale cast to the skin beneath her freckles tempered the rush of hormones. She stood tall and strong, a poster image for serving and protecting with her navy blue uniform, Kevlar and badge. But there was a searching request in those deep green eyes and a nervous fluttering of fingers through the wisps of escaping curls at her temple and nape.

“Sarge?” Meghan disappeared from the room and closed the door as he circled the desk. “What is it? Did something happen to Travis?”

She shook her head, alleviating that fear at least. “I saw Danny today. He came to the police station.”

John guided her to a chair and shut the blinds on the office door. He brushed his hand across her shoulder as he perched on the edge of his desk facing her. Maybe he was offering comfort, or maybe he needed the feel of her strength and warmth for himself—a tangible reassurance that she was okay. “I thought you had a restraining order.”

Maggie shot to her feet, avoiding both his touch and making eye contact. She dusted her fingers over the empty shelves behind his desk. “He had a legal way around it. He’s a person of interest in the task force’s investigation case. Detective Fensom wanted him to come in.”

John stayed put, letting her pent-up energy carry her around the room. He couldn’t imagine what kind of courage it required, and what kind of terror it caused, to come face-to-face with the man who’d raped and beaten her and stolen her child from her—a man she should have been able to trust. Protective anger fired through his blood, making it difficult to keep his own voice calm. “I’m guessing the investigation wasn’t the real reason he agreed to help.”

“Who knows? He could use some good karma with the police department, but…who knows?”

Beginning to understand her need to pace, John followed her to the bookshelf. Again he tried to touch her, but she crossed her arms and moved away. It was then that he saw the bruises on her wrist, the five purpling dots of violence that indicated Danny had put his hands on her.

Ah, hell. The marks were there beneath her collar, too. Double hell.

John pushed his fist against his mouth, bottling up his curse. Although he thought he could understand why Maggie might not want him touching her right now, he seethed at the idea that this wasn’t the first time Danny Wheeler had hurt her.

Maybe sensing his growing rage—hell, maybe avoiding it—she abruptly changed the topic. “You don’t have a single decoration in here. What about a picture of your sister? Do you have one with the two of you together? I know, you could put your medals and ribbons in a shadow box and hang them on the wall right next to your investigator certification. Or maybe frame your honorable discharge. You’d be doing this big, empty wall a favor. Showing off your accomplishments isn’t bragging, John. It’s just a statement of fact.”

“Sarge… Maggie.” He was stupefied by the sudden lightness of her tone but wasn’t buying the “everything’s hunky-dory now” attitude one bit. He moved in closer but didn’t touch. “You didn’t come here to decorate my office. When you ramble on like that, I know something’s wrong. Why are you here?”

She turned to face him, eyeing his chest like she wanted to be there. He breathed deeply to conquer the urge to pull her into his arms. He squeezed his hands into tight fists down at his sides when she reached up to fiddle with the collar of his shirt—adjusting it, smoothing it, touching that one little corner of cotton knit like she was afraid to act on the need in her eyes…like she just might be afraid of him.

“Talk to me, Sarge. How do I make this right for you?”

She looked up at him then—and he was certain that green would forever be his favorite color.

Maggie pulled her hand from his shirt, denying him even that little bit of contact. But her brave, beautiful eyes never once looked away. “I want to go with you to check out our building. Now. As soon as you can get off work. If there’s any way we can do it before I have to pick up Travis, that’d be great.” He was ready to answer yes, but she had more to say. “I need to get ahead of this mess, John. I’m tired of just reacting. I’m at a disadvantage. I need to take control. I want to know for sure whether Danny has been in the building, and if he’s responsible for any of the weird stuff that’s been going on. I need to find out if there’s any more crazy in store for me and the people who live there.”

Her fingertips brushed against his fists and something like relief, acceptance—need—sparked between them at the shy request. John opened his hands and laced his fingers together with hers, holding on tight. It was a welcome, a promise. The trust in that simple gesture cracked open something cold and doubting that had encircled his heart.

And then he felt the grip of her fingers squeeze around his knuckles, holding on just as tightly to him.

* * *

“
T
HAT AIN’T GOOD.”

Maggie swung her flashlight around to peer into the storage unit where John had stopped.
Her
storage unit.

She curled her fingers through the chicken wire that lined the open frame of the door. Her heart plummeted to a place as dank and dark as the brick walls and wooden framework around her.

Those were her things inside the modest 6 x 6 cubby, recessed like so many others into the basement walls of The Corsican. There was Travis’s tricycle she hadn’t been able to part with, the collection of baseball bats that got bigger and heavier with every year and the high chair she might never need again but had been too sentimental over to part with.

That was her card table and folding chairs, set up as though someone was expecting company down here. There were her winter clothes, out of their boxes and draped over the chairs as though someone had been trying them on or sorting through them.

And then there were the pictures. Not
her
pictures. Pictures of her in shades of gray from a dozen newspapers. Taped all over the back wall. There was the task force article from the morning
Journal
that mentioned her name. There was a photo of her taken when she’d earned her sergeant’s stripes. Every other officer who’d earned a rank that year had been cut out of the group picture. And there were others. A yellowed, faded image of her and Danny’s engagement announcement from a naval base newsletter—she hadn’t kept a copy. The lone color photograph was one of her crossing the street in front of the Fourth Precinct office. It looked as though it had been taken from above by someone standing on the top floor of the Fourth Precinct parking garage. With the greenery and sunshine of a clear spring day in the background, she knew it had been taken within the past few weeks, maybe even the past few days.

They’d been looking for signs of tampering with breakers, fuses and wiring. They’d checked windows and doors throughout the ground and basement levels, looking for any building access that was broken or had
accidentally
been left unlocked. Except for the main door and the security gate to the parking garage—both of which required a passkey or typed-in code—everything at the Corsican seemed to be locked up just fine. So how had he gotten in here? Any sense of normalcy she might have felt, any sense of privacy or security, rotated on its axis. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you’re not. You’re in control, remember?” John went to the window at the end of the passageway and reached up to inspect it. “It’s sealed tight.” He swung his beam into the rafters above them. “In fact, they could use a little ventilation down here. Looks like the main door is the only access. When was the last time you were here?”

She thought back to when she and Travis had brought down the boxes of winter coats and extra blankets. “When the weather started warming up. I brought those clothes down.”

“So that’s been a couple of months.”

“About the same length of time Danny’s been out of prison.”

“And no one else noticed it?”

“Maybe it just happened.”

He returned to her side to shine his light over the creepy homage. “Let’s get out of here.”

Maggie was stunned by the violation of it all. Not only had Danny gone off the deep end with his obsession, but he’d also broken in and done it in her own personal space. “It’s like a shrine.” Her breath stalled in her chest. “Or a setup for a wake.”

“It’s a sick mind is what it is.” John’s fingers wrapped around hers to pry them off the chicken wire. “We need to report this. And I want to talk to Joe and the landlord about the security here. As far as I’m concerned, it sucks.”

“Wait. Not yet.” She liked the feel of her hand inside John’s sure grip, so she held on. But she planted her feet and only let him pull her away from the front of the unit. She wasn’t ready to leave this part of the basement just yet. “I don’t know what Danny’s game is, but I’m going to figure it out. Why did he do this? How did he do it?”

John relented on his efforts to get her out the door, but he pulled her around the corner into the main passageway that cut through the two rows of lockers, probably so she wouldn’t have to see Danny’s handiwork. “Okay, then, let’s think about this. All the tenants have a key to the main door dead bolt, right?” Maggie nodded. “So who has a key to the locks in here?”