The Marine Next Door (8 page)

“We’ll get your name and title painted on the door,” Meghan promised. He didn’t mask his sigh of regret as well as he’d thought. “Does it meet with your approval?”

He must have a thing for freckles on women. The little specks dotting the skin on Meghan’s cheeks had been one of the first things he’d noticed about Maggie Wheeler, too. For a brief moment, his head filled with the memory of green eyes, deep and pure in color, wide and frightened and looking to him for answers he couldn’t give. But the similarities between his next-door neighbor and the firefighter whose happiness with another man had prompted John to re-up with the Corps ended there. Meghan was sleek and compact while Maggie was tall and rounded. One was a sunny blonde, the other a fiery redhead. One was going out of her way to make him feel welcome while the other…

Hell, he’d never had another woman intrude on his thoughts before when he was with Meghan. The war must have changed him in more ways than he’d realized. Even his ability to concentrate was missing in action. Taken aback by the observation, John covered his surprise by pulling off his KCFD cap and making a joke. “I’ve been sleeping on cots, the ground or a hospital bed for the past year. Don’t know if I can handle a plush leather chair and air-conditioning.”

“You’ve earned the promotion, John.”

But it would be a different job. He’d go in and analyze a fire scene after the fact, when his leg wouldn’t matter. His days of being on the front line, of being the first man into the action were behind him.

Swallowing the bile of that admission, John tossed his cap onto the desk, claiming the functional office space as his own. “Bare bones but sufficient. Most of my job will be about analysis and writing up reports, so this will do just fine.”

If Meghan sensed his melancholy over the irony of returning to work without really getting to do the work he’d been trained for, she hid it behind a smile and invited him next door into her office. In a marked contrast to the bare metal shelves and computer in his office, her space was decorated with awards, family pictures and abundant warmth.

He picked up the framed photo of Meghan surrounded by her husband and four adopted sons. “Good grief, all the boys are taller than you now.”

She gently caressed the picture when she returned it to her desk. “They’re not boys anymore.” She pointed to a wedding photograph on the shelf behind her desk. “Our oldest, Alex, is married now—to a lovely young attorney named Audrey.”

John knew the older boys had been teenagers when she and Gideon Taylor had adopted them. Still… “You’re not old enough to be a mother-in-law.”

Meghan laughed. “Audrey makes it easy. I’m only ten years older than she is so we’re more friends than in-laws. And Alex is a SWAT cop now. Hard to believe he was in so much trouble when I worked with him as a foster child. And this one—” she picked up another photo of a tall, muscular police officer with an imposing German shepherd seated beside him “—is Pike. He’s K-9 patrol with KCPD.” She pointed to another photo, with two teenagers dressed in blue-and-gold letter jackets. “Matthew and Mark were little more than toddlers when Gideon and I adopted them. Now they’re in high school.”

The love for her family was evident in her voice. John breathed in deeply, wishing that could have been him in those pictures, but knowing he never could have made her happy the way Gideon Taylor did. He’d been relegated to big brother status on the day they’d met, and nothing would ever change that. The pain he used to feel might not grip as tightly as it once had, but it was still there. John covered the inevitable awkwardness with a teasing laugh. “And yet, you don’t look a day over twenty-nine.”

Meghan joined in. “Thanks, but flattery will get you nowhere. I run a tight ship, Murdock. I’ll expect you to fall in line, too, now that you’ll be based here. I requested you for my station house, you know.”

“I suspected as much.”

“We always made a great team fighting fires,” Meghan explained. “You were solid, dependable. You grounded everybody here, especially me.” She leaned over the desk and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Besides, there’s not a one of those goons out there who can cook a meal the way you can. Not even me. And I’ve had such a hankering for your pork roast with that cheesy polenta and glazed carrots.”

Okay, he could do this. He could make nice and be friends and pretend his world hadn’t changed. “I’ll be sure to check the pantry before the end of the day, boss.”

“My taste buds are happier already.” She headed out the door. “Come on, I’ll show you the new upgrades in the kitchen—”

Forced or friendly conversation of any kind ended abruptly when the station alarm went off. Meghan checked in with the dispatcher and told him to make the call for the full team to suit up and respond to a warehouse fire near the Missouri River. The instinct to run out to the gear lockers in the garage with everyone else jolted through John’s legs.

He was following Dean to the first truck when the adrenaline haze cleared and John reminded himself that he was only feeling that jolt in one of his legs. Any
instinct
he felt was all in his imagination. He wasn’t cleared for front-line duty. Ever again. The call wasn’t his to respond to.

He drifted back out of the way as the men and women climbed into the trucks and paramedic van. The flashing orange lights blurred, and the strident repetition of the alarm muffled his hearing as he faded back into the space vacated by the ambulance.

He startled when Meghan dashed up and touched his arm. “I’ll call you myself once the blaze is contained so you can investigate the cause. Depending on the size of the fire, the structural damage and this weather—” she nodded toward the drizzle of rain outside the open garage doors that was coming faster and heavier by the second “—it may be morning before I can safely get you in there.”

John nodded and she stepped up onto the running board of the engine and opened the passenger-side door. He limped over to catch the door while she climbed inside. So maybe he had been relegated to chief cook and sideline watcher—he wasn’t going to let his punky mood hold anyone up and endanger the lives and property of the people who’d called in the fire.

“Are you all right?” she asked, pulling her hair up into a ponytail inside her white scene commander’s helmet.

John closed the door and tapped it twice, giving the driver the all-clear to go. “Go do your job,” he urged, then stepped aside. “Watch the roads. They’ll be slick with this new rain.”

With a nod, she picked up the radio and gave the order, “Let’s move out.”

The station lights stopped flashing and the alarm went silent as the last of the trucks pulled out, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the empty garage. The sudden silence and frustrated yearning for the life he’d once led filled him up and spilled out into the emptiness surrounding him.

Yeah, this reintegration into civilian life was going real damn well. He was making friends and doing important, useful things with his time.

Sarcasm was eating a hole in his stomach when John heard a telephone ring. He knew there had to be a skeleton crew on hand at the station 24/7. The dispatcher, at least, should still be in his office.

But the phone rang and rang, and no one was answering. Some of that same urgency he’d felt when the alarm had gone off sparked through him again, and he hurried back to the offices to discover that it was the phone on his new desk that was ringing.

No way had Meghan and Company 23 reached the fire, much less put it out. And he didn’t know another soul who’d be calling.

The only way to stop the speculation was to pick it up. “Hello?”

“Captain Murdock?”

He’d have written off the young voice as a wrong number or a prank if they hadn’t called him by name. “This is John Murdock. Who’s asking?”

“Travis Wheeler.” Son of a gun. Sergeant Green Eyes’ kid was calling him? Why? “I’m your new neighbor, remember?”

“I know who you are, Travis. How did you get this number?”

“You said you worked at Station 23.”

Resourceful kid. Admirable stick-to-it-tiveness. Although he wasn’t sure if tracking him down through the KCFD help desk or through some online information system irked him or concerned him. John checked his watch. It was after six o’clock. “Are you reporting a fire?”

There was a long pause and a rustling of movement over the phone, as though the kid was moving around. “No, I’m at the ballpark. Abbott Field.”

What the heck was going on? “Trav, I’m at work. I can’t talk baseball right now.”

“It’s raining.” Probably all across the city by now. “I tried calling my mom, but she didn’t answer. Sometimes she has to turn off her cell phone at work, like when she’s in a meeting. She didn’t answer at home either. It said something was out of service. It didn’t even ring.”

So he’d managed to get a call through to John at the fire station, but couldn’t get a line to his own mother? A vague sense of unease raised the fine hairs at the back of John’s neck. First the elevator in their building was out of commission, and now the landline phone wasn’t working? Travis had mentioned something on the elevator last week about needing to know a
safe place
where he could go. Those fine hairs jumped to full attention. What the hell was going on next door with Maggie Wheeler? “Why are you looking for your mom? Are you okay? Is
she
okay?”

“I don’t know. Practice got done early because of the rain and there’s no one here. Well, nobody I know. There are some people who were watching practice still here, but… She was supposed to pick me up, but she’s late.” Suspecting Travis was standing out in the rain was worrisome enough, but there was something ominous about the pause in the boy’s voice. “Mom’s never late.”

John plucked his hat from the desk and pulled out his keys. “I’m on my way.”

Chapter Five

“Are you kidding me? Two cops called my work this afternoon.”

Maggie deleted the vile message on her phone and hurried up the steps of the Fourth Precinct parking garage. The clock on her cell phone flipped over to 6:30 as another message from Danny Wheeler began to play. Her uniform and skin were damp from the rain outside, and she could feel the loose hairs sticking to her face kinking into curls. But she hadn’t bothered with a jacket or umbrella because she was running so far behind.

“They talked to my parole officer.” Danny’s voice was full of accusation. “They came to my job. What did you tell them about me, Mags?”

Nothing that wasn’t already in his arrest or prison record. But, like usual, if things had gone wrong with Danny’s day, it was somehow her fault. And if she hadn’t caused the problem, then he expected her to save him from it.

Reaching the third level, she jogged across the concrete toward her truck. She hit Delete again, praying the next message would be another from Travis, telling her that the parents of one of his teammates had agreed to wait with him after all, or had given him a ride home.

If she hadn’t been so busy pulling files and going over them with the detectives, absorbing every nugget of wisdom about what made one convicted rapist a viable suspect and another one not, she would have gotten Travis’s call. She would have excused herself from the debriefing with Montgomery and Fensom, even appealed to Chief Taylor if necessary, in order to leave early to pick up her son.

With no update from Travis after his first call, and his cell phone now going straight to voice mail, Maggie quickened her pace. It had always been her and Travis. As his only legal parent, he relied on her entirely for his transportation, food, love and safety. Letting him down, even when the weather and a chain of events beyond her control messed up her schedule, wasn’t an option she could live with.

She pulled her keys from her leather shoulder bag and punched the remote to unlock her truck.

Oh, hell. Danny had left yet another message. Whether he was upset about KCPD approaching him over making contact with her or if this was about his being a person of interest in the Rose Red Rapist case didn’t matter right now. “…asking me about
my
wife?
My
whereabouts? I remembered your favorite flower, didn’t I? You’re supposed to have my back, Mags. I am not going back to prison. Understand that? You will not send me back there.”

“Officer Wheeler?” Startled by the real voice behind her, Maggie silenced her phone and whirled around. “Maggie Wheeler?”

“Yes?” Settling back into her skin, she made a quick assessment of the man approaching her. His dark hair and easy stride were familiar, although she couldn’t place him. Civilian clothes. Unarmed. He looked friendly enough, but something about the piercing blue eyes put her guard up.

“Gabriel Knight.
Kansas City Journal.
” He flashed the press card hanging alongside a camera around his neck “I’ve managed to get a few words from the other members of Chief Taylor’s task force this week, but you about got away from me.”

“I’m off duty now, Mr. Knight.” She opened her truck door and dismissed him. “And I need to get going.”

“Is everything all right?” He nodded toward the cell phone squeezed in her fist. “You seem upset.”

She tucked the phone into her bag and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “I’m fine.”

“Just two minutes of your time, Mrs.? Miss—”

“It’s
Sergeant
Wheeler.” She climbed in behind the wheel. Travis needed her. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t have two minutes right now.”

When she turned to start the engine, he caught her door and held it open. “Do you think KCPD will have any better luck this time catching the Rose Red Rapist?”

“I hope so. Excuse me.” She tugged at the door handle, but the reporter didn’t budge.

“You hope so? That doesn’t inspire me with confidence, Sergeant Wheeler.”

“Well, of course, we’re doing everything we can. KCPD’s best are on this case, I promise you.” She tamped down on the red-haired temper sparking in her blood. No meant no in any situation. What didn’t Danny and this guy understand about that? But the first thing she’d learned when she went to work as a KCPD desk sergeant was that she was the face of KCPD most people saw. And that meant she had to be a friendly, helpful, patient face. So she drummed up a smile for the reporter. “Do you mind?”