The Marine Next Door. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ Blow hot, blow cold? Make nice and then freak out? We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

      Whatever this woman’s secrets were, she wasn’t telling. Instead of answering his accusation, she stuffed the note into her uniform slacks pocket. Then she huffed up in all her warrior Amazon glory, tipping her chin as her skin cooled to peachy dots over alabaster. “I’m Maggie Wheeler. Travis is my son.”

      “John Murdock.”

      “Are you military or KCFD?” She eyed the Corps logo on his T-shirt and the jarhead cut that he wore whether he was overseas with his Reserve unit or home in Kansas City, working for the fire department.

      “Both. USMC, retired. For about a week now. Moving back to town after my last tour and some rehab. Firefighting is the job I’m coming back to after serving my stint in the Corps.” He made another stab at moving closer. “Sarge, um, Maggie … are you okay?”

      Her eyes widened as though the question had startled her. Or maybe it was his advance. Before she answered, she retreated into the hallway. “Of course I’m okay. Thank you for serving our country—Captain Murdock, was it?”

      “Just John now.”

      She nodded. “I apologize for Travis being so nosy. He’s going through a phase where he’s completely nuts about baseball and firefighters and … everything. And he’s never been shy about speaking his mind.” She barely paused for a breath. “I’m sorry I freaked out on the elevator. And the note. It’s just that I … Like I said, it was a rough day. Well, you don’t need to know that. Welcome to The Corsican, John.”

      Yep, that sounded sincere.

      By the time John reached the door, Maggie Wheeler’s was closing. He heard not one, not two, but three separate locks sliding into place.

      Something about that message, or the person who’d left it, had his neighbor spooked even more than getting stranded on the elevator had. Even though she wore a gun and a vest and sergeant’s stripes, indicating she was no rookie when it came to law enforcement, the woman was spooked.

      John narrowed his gaze and looked up and down the hallway. Beyond the super checking him in this morning, and the curious person from the apartment down the hall who hadn’t spoken, he hadn’t seen a single soul out here all day long. A familiar niggle of unease crept along the back of his neck like when he’d sensed a sniper’s rifle focused on him up in the Afghan mountains.

      He shook off the hyperawareness and retreated into his apartment. Afghanistan was seven thousand miles away. His years of service were done and he was reporting back to KCFD Station 23 this week to start his new job as an arson investigator assigned to the ladder company with whom he’d once fought fires.

      He had plenty on his plate right now to deal with. Leggy redheads and curious kids and somebody else’s bad news weren’t his concern tonight.

      John locked the door behind him and leaned back against it, sweeping his gaze across the beige apartment decorated in wrapped furniture and sealed boxes.

      So this was where he was going to live now.

      It beat the cot and caves and blood he’d left in the Middle East. It beat the VA hospital and physical therapy units where he’d learned how to walk again.

      But with nothing but bare walls and the paranoid lady cop next door, the jury was out on whether he’d call this new place home.

       Chapter Three

      “I know it’s an imposition, but it would be a huge help. Thank you, Coach Hernandez. Yes, I know. Thank you, Michael,” Maggie corrected at his insistence. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

      Maggie locked her double-cab pickup and hurried after the other woman and two men striding through the sliding glass doors into St. Luke’s Hospital. She’d been working the task force for nearly a week now, and this was the first time she’d been invited to leave the precinct office. If chauffeuring the members of the team was the only way she could get out and do some field work, then a chauffeur she’d be.

      “I should be able to pick up Travis after practice this evening. With my new assignment at KCPD, my hours aren’t as structured as they used to be, and I just can’t get away today to pick him up after school and get him to Little League. But I’ll be there by the time you’re done.”

      With an apologetic frown, Maggie nodded to the reception desk volunteer who was pointing to the sign requesting cell phone usage be limited to the lobby and outdoor areas of the hospital. But Michael Hernandez was saying something about his son having Webelo Scouts after practice and that his late wife used to take care of all the transportation stuff anyway, and would Maggie and Travis want to go out to dinner with him and his son afterward? Maggie wasn’t finding any polite way to break in to end the conversation with the man she’d asked the favor from.

      Seeing Nick Fensom’s beefy hand holding the elevator doors open, and withering under the glare from the volunteer, she opted to simply interrupt and wrap up the personal call she’d had to make. “I’ve got work to do, Coach,” she apologized, carefully avoiding using his first name and encouraging anything that might be construed as a personal interest in him. “But I’ll call the school to let them know Travis can leave with you. No, I’m quite sure about dinner. I appreciate your help, though. Thanks.”

      Worried that she’d kept the other task force members waiting, Maggie snapped her phone shut and darted through the open doors to an empty corner of the elevator. As the doors closed, she tried not to make too much of the feeling of déjà vu that skittered along her spine. Was it just last week that she’d gotten stuck on an elevator with her new neighbor, John Murdock? She’d been just as nervous about sharing the tight space with the imposing former marine as she was about joining other members on her first victim interview.

      Joe Standage’s assertion that he didn’t know what the heck was going on in his building, and that he’d have to wait for an expert to help him repair the elevator before it went back into service, was hardly reassuring. Maggie and Travis had gotten into the habit of taking the stairs down to the parking garage anyway, so it wasn’t that much of a hardship to use them coming back up, as well. And even though dinner conversations with her son, and her own dreams at night, had centered around the possibility of crashing elevators and being trapped on one with a monster far less interested in helping them escape than John Murdock had been, Maggie refused to let her fears keep her from doing her job today.

      For the trade-off of a free ride this morning, she’d get the chance to observe some of KCPD’s best in action. Maggie figured she’d learn more about how to conduct an investigation in one morning by watching the real thing than she’d learned in an entire semester of her interrogation tactics class.

      But as the elevator moved upward, it wasn’t the anticipation of doing actual field work that had her heart pounding in her ears. Irrational as it might be, sharing an elevator with a man was always a challenge for her. Getting stuck on one was a real nightmare. Perhaps if she’d chosen to take the stairs ten years ago instead of allowing herself to get cornered in the elevator by her enraged husband, she might have gotten away. She might have been spared the attack that had forever changed her life.

      She was justified in her aversion to sharing tight spaces with someone bigger and stronger than she was. Even compared to her, standing six feet tall with her work shoes on, John Murdock was an imposing man. Maggie’s gaze flickered to the red-haired detective in the tailored suit СКАЧАТЬ