by Julie Miller
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.
“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.”
<
br /> 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.”<
br />
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.