The Marine Next Door (7 page)

“I guess it’s a date you never forget.”

“Haven’t yet.”

Bailey’s bruised blue eye sharpened its focus. “Trip said more detectives who were experts in this kind of crime would be in to question me today. Is that who you guys are?”

Maggie spoke in gentle tones but didn’t sugarcoat the truth. “KCPD believes the man who attacked you has raped several women. He disappeared off the radar for a few years, but it seems he’s back in Kansas City.”

“What he did to me, he did to other women?”

“The M.O.’s match. So our chief has put together a task force.” She nodded toward the door. “Detective Montgomery, he’s the task force leader. He’ll want to ask you some questions when he’s done talking to your fiancé.”

“I know Spencer.” Bailey hugged the blanket covering her up to her chest. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

She was on a first-name basis with the task force leader? Detective Montgomery had never mentioned a personal connection with the victim. But then, she’d yet to see the man reveal much of anything he didn’t want to. “He’s one of the best investigators we have.”

“I know he is. He helped capture the Rich Girl Killer.” But Bailey was sinking beneath the covers, pulling up the blanket like a sheet of armor.

“If there’s some kind of problem between you, his partner, Nick Fensom—”

“No.”

Maggie released a silent breath and tried again. “Maybe you’d feel more comfortable talking to a woman. Dr. Kilpatrick is a police psychologist, more of an adviser than a cop. She doesn’t even carry a gun.”

“Why don’t you ask me the questions?” Oh, no. Was she serious?

“I’m just support staff. I’m not trained yet—”

“Is it crazy to just want to be left alone?” Bailey’s gaze drifted off to a distant corner of the room. “Yet I’m so afraid of being alone now.”

“Whatever you’re feeling right now is normal.” Maggie spoke from practical experience and the stories she’d heard in her support group. “Strangers may make you uncomfortable. For some rape victims, any man can make them nervous. For others, just leaving a familiar place can trigger a panic attack.”

Bailey’s gaze came back to her. “My sister—well, Charlotte’s my stepsister—she was like that. She was kidnapped when she was in high school. For as long as I knew her, she would never leave the house. Until Trip came along. She still doesn’t like crowds. And she has a therapy dog to help with the panic attacks.” She shifted in the bed to face Maggie. “It took her years to be able to function normally. Is that what I have to look forward to?”

“Surviving a sexual assault is a lot like coping with the death of a loved one. It can affect each victim differently. The length of time it takes to learn how to cope and then move on with your life, and how you get to that point, is different with each person. There’s no right or wrong way to recover. And you can’t compare your path to anyone else’s.”

There was a long pause as Bailey processed the answer. Then she surprised Maggie by reaching for her hand. “I never even saw him coming. I was so mad at Harper and my mom, so overwhelmed by all the wedding plans, that I didn’t even realize the screeching of brakes I heard in the street was for me.”

All of a sudden, Bailey started talking about the attack. Maggie glanced toward the door for help, almost calling out for one of the experts to come back in. But the young woman’s grip convulsed around hers with every memory she described. Tears glistened on her bruised cheek and Maggie didn’t have the heart to leave her alone or risk her shutting down again.

Maggie thought of her classes, and formulated questions she should ask. But Bailey kept talking. Her eyes were closed, as if replaying events in her mind. “When I woke up, I was in this empty building. On the floor. I mean, on a mattress that was directly on the floor. It was covered in plastic. Everything was.”

With one last glance at the door, Maggie gave up on willing reinforcements to arrive.
Do it.
She adjusted her position on the stool, clutched Bailey’s hand a little more tightly. If she wanted to be a detective, she might as well start acting like one. “Do you remember anything else about the building? Were you in a small room? A large one?”

“It was sterile.”

“You mean it was clean?” The report had mentioned odors she remembered. “Like the hospital?”

Bailey shook her head. “It smelled awful. There was no furniture except for the mattress. No decorations. There were partial walls—framing where walls and windows should go—like a big office or apartment building under construction. Or one being gutted and torn apart, I don’t know. Mostly I saw the floor.”

“What was the awful smell, do you know?”

“Pickles.”

“Pickles?”

“I don’t know. I was in and out of consciousness. And he swore he’d cut me or hit me again or put the hood back on me if I so much as spoke.” She inhaled a deep breath. “But yeah, now that you say that, it
was
clean—what I could see before he blindfolded me and took me back to that intersection near Fairy Tale Bridal. The plastic underneath me was crystal clear. I remember looking through it and studying the design on the mattress, counting the stitches while he…” Bailey pulled her hand away and rolled onto her opposite side, curling into a ball.

Maggie knew the interview was done and didn’t try to push her. “Thank you for talking to me, Miss Austin. I know it’s not easy, but knowledge gives us power against this guy. It’s the only weapon we have right now to keep anyone else from getting hurt. Thank you for your courage in talking to me.”

Curling her fingers into her palm, Maggie fought off the urge to reach out and offer some kind of comfort. But sharing her compassion wasn’t why Maggie was here. She’d come to St. Luke’s to do her job—or rather, to learn more about how to do her job. Knowing she needed to report this new information about the assault to Detective Montgomery and the others, she adjusted the holster on her belt and stood.

Her fingers were on the door handle when Bailey’s soft voice reached her. “Does it get better? Will I ever not hurt? Will I ever feel safe? Will I ever be able to trust again?”

Maggie knew honesty was the only way to answer. “The pain will fade over time.” As for the rest? “Like I said, every survivor’s path to healing is different. It’ll be tough, but try to remember the important thing, Miss Austin—we survived.”

Chapter Four

Just another day at the office,
John tried to tell himself as he pulled his pickup into the parking lot next to KCFD Station 23. Although he’d just spent most of his shift down at headquarters, sitting through orientation meetings and filling out paperwork, he knew it wasn’t true. The last of his training at HQ was done.

Today was his D-day.

Storm the beach head of normalcy and find a way to fit back in to his old life again.

He breathed in deeply through his nose and let the doubt creep out between his lips.

Fire Station 23 had been his destination every workday for almost a decade, before he’d had enough of the wanting and not having—before not even having the right to think about Meghan Taylor had dulled his senses so much that he’d been close to becoming a hazard to himself and his team.

And he’d loved being a firefighter. At six-five and a good 250 pounds, he’d always been a physical being. He’d played sports in school, had relished the discipline of the ROTC program that had paid for his degree at KU. He’d opted to join the Corps after graduation, had served in both infantry and artillery support units. When his stint was up and he’d transferred to the Reserves, firefighting had offered the perfect schedule to give him the time off he needed to attend weekend trainings and summer deployments. His engineering degree had taught him how buildings were put together, and how fire and heat, chemicals and explosions could bring them down.

Being a firefighter wasn’t all that different from serving his country. He liked using his hands to maintain, deploy and neutralize powerful equipment and dangerous explosives. He thrived on the teamwork involved in attacking the flames, developing close relationships with the men and women he worked with. He loved cooking for his buddies at the firehouse, keeping physically and mentally fit, wearing his uniform proudly, and protecting his city.

Each time the alarm had gone off, he’d eagerly answered the call.

When his country had asked him to go overseas for a year, he’d answered that call, too.

Getting the investigative assignment at Station 23 should feel like a well-earned reward, like he was finally coming home.

John turned off the engine and braced his forearms on the steering wheel to stare through the windshield. In the two years he’d been gone, the city had repainted the firehouse facade a cool steel-gray. He missed the warm, earthy brown of the old bricks. He missed knowing what was going on in the lives of his coworkers, several of whom were now moving in and out of the open bays, washing down one of the engines and trimming up the landscaping in front of the building. He missed knowing exactly what job he was doing and feeling confident that he was the best man for that job. He missed his damn leg and the friends he’d lost in that roadside bombing.

Muttering a curse, John leaned back, dropping his hand to rub his thigh and run his fingers across the elastic band and molded polymers that added the illusion of a real limb beneath the material of his KCFD-issue cargo pants. He wouldn’t be fighting fires anymore with the hardware he was wearing. He’d been
promoted
to arson investigator, a dubious honor that meant KCFD would honor his service to them and to his country, but that there really was no place for him on the front lines of a ladder truck unit anymore.

“You’d best get to it,” he chided the hazel eyes squinting back at him in the rearview mirror.

He pulled the brim of his KCFD ball cap low over his forehead and opened the truck door. Despite the handicapped tag stuffed in his glove compartment, John had parked several spaces away from the entrance, giving him time to adjust his stance over his false leg and minimize his limp before approaching the station’s open garage doors. The early-evening sky swirled with clouds that hinted at spring showers by nightfall. If he’d been a superstitious man, he’d have seen the coming storm as a bad omen. But John believed in what he could see and touch and trust. He knew this day wasn’t going to get any better. The sooner he got this bittersweet reunion with his old job and friends started, the sooner it would end.

“John.” As soon as he rounded the corner in front of the fire station, Meghan Wright Taylor set aside the flowers she’d been transferring to a decorative planter and pushed to her feet. Her smile was as sunny as her wavy blond hair as she shucked her gardening gloves and hurried across the driveway to greet him. “I thought my shift was going to end before you got here today.” She stretched up on tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck. “It’s good to see you.”

Although he leaned over to complete the hug, John braced himself to absorb the contact with her shorter frame. Meghan had proved to be a good friend since they’d first been assigned to Ladder Truck 23 together more than fifteen years ago. But her heart had always belonged to one guy, and Gideon Taylor was a smart man to love her just as hard and deep in return.

Even in her black duty uniform, Meghan smelled like the outdoors and sunshine. John released her and stepped away before too many memories and what-ifs got stuck in his head and his first day back at the station turned maudlin. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he joked.

Meghan laughed and he noted lines of humor beside her warm brown eyes that hadn’t been there before. Marriage and motherhood and—cripes, were those captain’s bars pinned to her collar?—suited her well.

John flicked his finger beneath her collar, indicating the brass pin she wore. “Somebody got promoted while I was gone.”

“This is my station now.” She was a smart firefighter, and had earned the respect of her male colleagues long ago. “I’m running the show.”

“Congratulations.”

“Big John Murdock, I heard you were coming back.” John turned at the voice of another familiar friend. Dean Murphy strode out of the garage with a big grin set on his face. “So how are you?”

“Still don’t like to be called Big John.” Images of tall tales and television commercials had never fit, even when he’d been 100 percent. He clasped hands with the younger man and exchanged a firm handshake. “You still causing trouble around here, Dean?”

Dean had been little more than a rookie before John was deployed. There was a new cloak of maturity around his trim, wiry frame now. “Not much.”

“Not much?”

Meghan linked her arm through John’s elbow and pulled him into the station house. “Dean is as much of a player as ever. Claims he wants to settle down and get married before he turns thirty, but I’ve yet to meet any Mrs. Murphy-to-be.”

“You cut me deep, boss.” He clasped his hands over his heart in a mock show of pain. “I could settle down if I had to.”

“If you had to?” Meghan teased.

Dean winked. “Can I help it if the ladies find me irresistible? I’m just doing my duty to keep ’em all happy.”

“As long as you keep doing your job the way you do when you show up at my station house, I don’t care how you charm the ladies on your own time.” A drumroll of thunder rumbled in the distance and Meghan glanced skyward. “Dean, let’s get these trucks back in the house before the rain hits.” Her order, gentle yet succinct, got Murphy and some other men moving. But she tugged at John’s arm, pulling him away from the sudden bustle of activity around the shiny yellow engines. “Come on, I’ll show you your office.”

John nodded hellos to old friends and introduced himself to the new hires before following Meghan into the hallway that led to the station offices. A lot had changed on the inside of Station 23 since he’d gone overseas, too. New paint, new staff. Going into an office where he’d work banker’s hours and then go home instead of heading for the bunk rooms and lounge areas where the firefighters on seventy-two-hour shift work would sleep and hang out like a family until a call came in.