by Julie Miller
He’d left a part of himself behind on that roadside in Afghanistan. In more ways than one.
Returning to the Corps was supposed to have been a fresh start for him—coming home after his stint was up, the beginning of a brand-new chapter in his life. Yet he felt stuck, like nothing had changed. He’d loved the wrong woman, raised a sister who no longer needed him, given his spleen and a good part of his right leg, a couple of friends and half of his soul to the enemy he’d gone to fight.
Inside, he was still a long way from coming home.
Adding boxes of books and kitchen supplies, along with a few civilian clothes, to the boring beige of his furnished apartment didn’t do much to make this feel like a homecoming. But it got him out of the spare bedroom at his sister’s place so she could sell it and get on with marrying her fiancé. And, it was mindless exercise that tired him out and didn’t require much thought. Right now it was enough to feel less like a burden and to look forward to a decent night’s sleep.
John slowed when he heard footsteps ahead of him. Two sets of footfalls on the far side of that last pillar. He was a big enough man that it’d take a pretty bold mugger to come after him. But size alone wasn’t a deterrent if the perps were hyped up on some kind of drug or they took a closer look at his disability and mistook him for an easy mark—if there was a mugger at all.
Running into normal, everyday people who expected normal, everyday conversation out of him was almost more daunting than facing someone who wanted to hurt him. He’d been in survival mode for over a year now, and adjusting to normal was taking just as long as the psychologist who’d debriefed him when he’d mustered out had said it would.
The curve of a butt in navy blue slacks disappearing between the open doors of the garage’s elevator almost made him stop in his tracks as he rounded the last pillar and passed the wall of junction boxes and access panels and fire emergency equipment. So the challenge would be normal, everyday civility if he got on that elevator. Would the woman who owned those curves notice the empty pant leg? Or the carbon-fiber composite rod sticking out of his boot? Would there be a slew of curious questions or politely stilted silence as she avoided eye contact with him? Maybe she’d just stare at the scars on his neck, arm and hand. A vein ticked along the column of his throat as the relative tranquility of being alone warred with his common sense.
Who knew how long he’d have to stand there holding the heavy boxes before his ride returned again? The Corsican might be rich in architectural history and renovation potential, but the building had just the one elevator that ran to all ten floors. He might as well start dealing with normal, everyday now rather than putting it off indefinitely.
“Hold the elevator,” he called out, lengthening his stride.
The woman gasped. Maybe he’d just startled her. “Hurry up,” she muttered—to her companion.
John bristled at the whispered slight. Were they trying to get away? Maybe she’d gotten a glimpse of him as well and wasn’t thrilled about the idea of sharing the tiny space with him either. But if he could make the effort to be civil, then the woman attached to that backside could damn well do the same.
“Hold it,” he ordered in a sharper tone. He heard a “Mom,” and then a slender, tanned arm shot out to catch the door as he slipped inside. He looked straight into a pair of emerald-green eyes, silently telling the woman that he knew she’d tried to leave him behind. “Thanks.”
But when the doors closed and John retreated to the opposite corner to rest his boxes on the railing, he wondered if he’d made a tactical error. That verdant gaze, sparkling with defiance or warning or some other kind of intense emotion, followed him all the way to the back of the elevator before the woman blinked and turned away. Seeing her adjust her stance to position herself between him and the chestnut-haired boy with her made John wish he’d waited for the next ride up after all. Nice to meet you, too. He felt her wariness of him like a punch in the gut.
And he’d been worried about making small talk.
This woman meant business when it came to protecting her son from the big, bad strangers of the world. Despite the copper-colored hair twisted up in a bun at the nape of her neck, with a dozen fiery gold wisps popping loose to curl against her skin, she was no dainty female. She was tall, standing nearly six feet, judging by the mere five or six inches John topped her by when he normally towered over most women. She was in uniform and she was armed.
One hand rested on the butt of the GLOCK 9 mm holstered at her waist as she inched closer to the boy who was peeking at him from beneath the bill of his Royals baseball cap. John was pretty sure the protective-mama move was intentional when she turned so he could clearly see the KCPD badge hanging from the chain beneath her starched collar.
“What floor?” she asked politely enough. But her green eyes darted as though they were assessing his height and width and the distance between them.
“Seventh.”
“Travis.” She squeezed the boy’s shoulder beside the backpack he wore, drawing John’s attention to the fact that her skin wasn’t tanned so much as it was dotted with hundreds of freckles.
The boy, whom John put in the nine- to ten-year-old range, slipped his ball glove over the handle of the bat he carried before pushing the button and then twisting from his mother’s grasp. “Do you live on the seventh floor?”
Well, at least someone in this elevator didn’t think he was the spawn of the devil. “That’s why I’m going there.”
“We just came from baseball practice,” the boy announced. “I play in the outfield, but I want to be the second baseman or shortstop. Do you like baseball?”
“Trav.” The redhead chided her son in a soft tone that belied her tough-chick image. “What did I say about bothering people?”
“He’s no bother, ma’am.” Now where did that reassurance come from? He should have been happy she didn’t want to talk to him.
The boy named Travis tilted his face up to John’s, giving him a clear look at the inherited freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, but Mom says I need to know all the neighbors on our floor in case she’s not home and I need to go to a safe place. We’re on the seventh, too. I’m Travis Wheeler.”
Safe place? Although there were other eighty-year-old buildings on this block that were in the process of being reclaimed like this one, one of the reasons John had chosen this particular neighborhood was so that his sister could stop in for a visit whenever she wanted to. The fact that Miranda Murdock was a cop, like this woman, didn’t matter. Big brothers looked out for their little sisters—even if she was engaged to a man who was just as protective of her as John.
This building was safe. The remodeled structure now surpassed fire codes and he’d been assured by the landlord that retired tenants and young professionals—not gnarly devil men who terrorized women and children—populated the place.
“I’m Captain—” normal, civilian conversation, remember? “—John Murdock. I work for the Kansas City Fire Department. Out of Station 23.”
“You’re a firefighter? Cool.”
“Sorry.” Mama clasped her hand over Travis’s shoulder and pulled him back to her without sharing her name and completing the introductions. “You’re new here?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been deployed overseas or stationed in the DC area for a couple of years now. Moving in today.” There he went, making a rusty effort to put her at ease.
“What apartment?”
“709.”
“Mom, that’s right next door to us.”
“So it is.” The smile for her son faded when she faced John again. “Don’t worry, I’m not looking for babysitters. Travis won’t be stopping by.”
“I’m not a baby—”
“If he needs to—”
“He won’t.” John almost grinned at Travis’s frustrated groan when his overprotective mama hugged her arm across his chest. “There are plenty of other tenants in the building we tru—
”
Her gaze wavered and dropped to the middle of John’s dusty gray-green T-shirt where she could read the letters USMC.
Trust?
Yep, no need to worry about polite civility with this woman. He was free to be his moody, isolated self, as far as she was concerned.
So why did it bother him that she turned away to watch the buttons for each floor light up without making direct eye contact with him again?
“Can you play baseball with your leg like that?”
“Travis!”
Mama put her fingers over her son’s mouth and John finally got the silence he’d thought he wanted until the elevator jerked, an alarm bell rang, and the whole car jolted to an unexpected stop. The redhead yelped as she tumbled into the back wall, but she caught her son and clung to the railing with a white-knuckled intensity, keeping both of them upright.
“What the hell?” John swayed on his feet, but the boxes anchored him into place. The light for the seventh floor was lit up above the door, but the doors didn’t open. Beneath the blare of the alarm he listened for any sounds of cables and pulleys reengaging. He reached across the elevator and pounded the alarm button with his fist until it shut off. He tilted his face toward the trap door and machine works above them. Silence. Almost like the building’s electricity had suddenly shut off. But why were the lights in the car still on if there was no power to the rest of the elevator? They were good and stuck. So much for life returning to normal. His gaze zeroed in on the ashen skin of the policewoman. “Does this happen often here?”
“Mom?” The kid tugged on the sleeve of his mother’s uniform. A worried frown veed between the boy’s eyes as he turned to John. “She’s got a thing about elevators. She doesn’t really like them.”
“That’s nonsense. I’m fine, sweetie.” She cupped her son’s face and flashed a smile for his benefit. But John wasn’t buying it. Freckles there definitely had a phobia about something. Being trapped? Closed-in places? Fear of falling? “I’ve never gotten stuck in the elevator here before. But it’s an old building. Stuff happens.”
“It didn’t happen on any of my other rides up and down from the garage.”
Her glare told John that she didn’t appreciate his pointing out that fact. “We just have to notify the super, Mr. Standage, that we’re stuck, and he’ll get things moving in no time.” Assuming an air of nonchalance, probably to reassure the boy, she crossed to the rows of buttons and opened the emergency phone panel. Only, instead of pulling out the telephone, she dropped down in front of the opening. “There’s no phone in here.”
“What?”
“It’s gone. There’s nothing but wires.”
“Let me see.” John set the boxes of books on the floor and knelt in front of the panel beside her. He’d seen billiard balls ricochet across a pool table slower than the woman shot to the opposite corner of the car, pulling her son with her. So maybe he was what she was afraid of.
That didn’t bode well for her staying calm in this crisis.
Drawing on years of training to keep victims or locals calm during a rescue attempt with KCFD or raid on insurgents overseas, John pushed aside any insult or guilt he might feel at her obvious aversion to him, and kept his voice as calm as he could make it. It was a little harder to control the jerky movements that might startle her as he pushed to his feet and locked his bum leg into place.
But the woman was wearing a KCPD uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. There had to be some training that she could draw on, too. “You have a cell phone on you, Sarge?”
“Yes.”
He remained by the door and simply spoke over the jut of his shoulder to her. “If you’ve got Standage’s number, call him directly. If not, call 9-1-1 and ask for the fire department. They’ll know how to deal with elevator emergencies.”
She pulled her phone from the bag looped over her shoulder and opened it to make the call. Good. “You said you were with the fire department now. Do you know how to get us out of here?”
“We’ll find out what I can remember.”
John wedged his big fingers into the slit between the doors. He grunted with the strain on his forearms and biceps until he created a gap wide enough to slide his hands in all the way and get a better grip. “Let’s see where we are.”
“Joe? This is Maggie Wheeler from 707. We’re stuck on the elevator. Are you working on the wiring? Or did the power get cut somehow? Yes. There are three of us.”
Once he could get his shoulders and body weight into it, John pushed the doors all the way open and took a step back to assess the concrete wall across from his feet. There was a gap about a yard wide at the top that revealed a white number 7 painted on a pair of outside elevator doors.
“Joe says he’ll be right up,” Maggie reported, stowing her cell phone. “Of course, that means he’ll be taking the stairs, and with his arthritis, that could still be a while. Are we between floors?”
“Yeah.” John wasn’t looking forward to spooking the woman any further, but right now he was a little glad that he’d gotten stuck in the elevator with the flame-haired Amazon instead of someone more petite. He glanced back to link up with those rich green eyes. “You got a name, Sarge?”
She nodded. “Maggie.”
“Maggie, can you reach those doors and help me open them?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped up beside him. Good. That was an old trick that still worked apparently. Calling a person by his or her name got them to focus, maybe even trust a little. Giving that person a specific job to do was often the easiest way to distract her from her fears.
Even though he felt her flinch when their hands brushed against each other, she didn’t hesitate to slide her fingers between the doors and help pull them apart. Now they were looking out onto the carpeted hallway of the seventh floor. Weird. The only time he’d seen an elevator not align with the exterior doors was when the power had been deliberately cut by firefighters battling a blaze.
John glanced up. But the damn light for the seventh floor was still lit up. He wouldn’t be able to see out into the hallway if the lights were off there, too. What kind of crazy wiring did they have in this place?
“What do we do now?” Sergeant Maggie asked.
John was all for getting off this carnival ride until he could figure out just what the heck was going on. “Son?” He turned back to Travis Wheeler. “Are you a climber?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Careful,” Maggie warned, understanding what John was asking of her boy. “Shouldn’t we wait?”
“Give me the bat and glove first,” John instructed. “Backpack, too.” The boy handed over his prized possessions and John slid them through the opening onto the eye-level floor above them. “Hold on a sec. So your mama doesn’t worry.” He met the wary glare of deep green eyes as he picked up the two boxes of books and wedged one against either of the open doors. “That should buy us a few seconds in case anything happens.”
“What could happen?” Maggie asked.
John nodded to her purse. “Call Standage back. Tell him not to touch or do anything until we give him the all clear. We don’t want the power to suddenly reengage.”
While she called the super, John laced his fingers together and bent down to give the boy the boost up he needed.
“Cool, Mom.” Travis paused with his fingers and chin resting on the hallway floor. “This is just like that movie I watched at Juan’s house. The one where the elevator crashed and almost cut that lady in two when she was climbing out.”
“Oh, Lord,” came the maternal gasp from behind.
John cringed at the boy’s enthusiastic but ill-timed observation and pushed him on through the opening. “Not the time to be talking movies, kid.”
As Travis crawled several feet beyond the opening and retrieved his things, John turned to the redhead clinging to the back railing. Without the freckles, there’d be no color to her skin at all. He reached out a hand to her. “Your turn, Sarge.”
>
She clung to the railing. “Joe says he’ll wait until I call him again.”
“Good, but we’re not going to wait. I don’t think you want to be stuck in here with me any longer than you have to be.”
“You know, it’s not really you,” she insisted.
“If you say so.” But scared was scared, whatever the cause. John’s hand never wavered. “Come on, Maggie.”
With her eyes locked onto his, her shaky fingers revealing the same distrust, she finally reached out and slid her palm into his. She took a step toward him. “It’s been a stressful day. Normally, I’m not a basket case like this. I just…really do have a thing about elevators.”
“Fair enough.” John pulled her up beside him, then stooped down to create the same step-up with his fingers. “I’ve decided I’ve got a thing about this particular elevator myself. There’s something wrong with the wiring for parts of it to work and parts of it to stop cold like this. I think I’ll be calling KCFD to make an inspection of the place. In the meantime, I say let’s get out of here.”
“Okay.”
She braced one hand on John’s shoulder and he lifted her. As she crawled out onto the carpeted floor, she started to slide back and John’s hands automatically latched on to…those curves. The flare of her hips and rounded arc of her bottom were an easy grab. And a nice, firm fit.
John swallowed hard and shook his head. He had no grounds to fault the boy for bad timing.
“Sorry,” he apologized, giving her a second boost. His hands and eyes had already lingered longer than an impersonal firefighter’s should. But the lady cop broke the contact just about as soon as the nerve endings in the tips of his fingers sparked to life at the warmth and suppleness they detected beneath her crisp navy blue trousers.
The view was over and gone within another second, and Sergeant Maggie rolled to safety on the floor above him. John eased a tight breath out between his lips. Something dormant inside him had unexpectantly awakened. Was it just the fact that he hadn’t touched a woman for two years? Hugs with his sister and handshakes with doctors and therapists hadn’t zinged through him and thrown him off-kilter like this. And prickly redheads had never been his type.