The Marine Next Door

by Julie Miller

  Inevitably Travis’s curiosity about his injuries came up. And while transtibial amputation had tongue-tied the boy, pulling up his pant leg to let him inspect the knee joint and composite rod, as well as letting him inspect the specialized blade prosthetic John used when he was running or working out had kept him talking right up until the moment Maggie had to literally pull him out the door with reminders of brushing teeth and bedtime.

  John slipped his bookmark between the pages of the novel he was reading and set it aside to ponder what it was about the family next door that could divert his attention even now that all was quiet on the other side of the bedroom wall that separated his apartment from theirs.

  Maggie had been relaxed and friendly at dinner, curious to hear about his sister’s upcoming wedding; sympathetic to learn that he’d lost his parents as a teenager, too. She’d liked his cooking and was surprised to learn that he was the self-taught chef of the family who’d honed his gourmet skills by watching television and preparing dinners for his coworkers at the fire station.

  John inhaled a deep, settling breath as he recalled the lines of strain beside those striking green eyes and pale rose lips. Most of Maggie Wheeler’s relaxed charm had been an act.

  He speculated about the weird convergence of events surrounding the lady cop. If there were enough strange things going on to make him suspicious, then she must be downright paranoid.

  Something about night patrols and trusting his gut and experience more than he trusted his eyes and ears told him there was trouble lurking at the fringes of Maggie’s life. The woman was hiding a secret or two. She’d been terrified that her son had been alone at the ballpark and out of contact with her. She’d mentioned a mysterious man. The woman wore a gun, a badge and body armor, yet she’d just about had a nervous breakdown when that elevator had gotten stuck.

  John eyed the stump of his leg beneath the hem of the running shorts he wore to bed. He was hardly the warrior he’d once been, but he had a feeling that woman’s troubles were going to nag at him until he had answers. In every cell of his body he’d been trained to rescue and protect. And while life had altered how he could respond, the instincts were still there.

  Maybe that’s all this bout of insomnia was—his instincts warring with his abilities. He was aware that Maggie had stirred something in him—a fact that was playing hell with his long-held assumption that Meghan Taylor was the only female who would ever turn his head. And he knew Maggie was in trouble. But even though her son had invited him into their lives, she hadn’t asked for his help. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he could do for her beyond volunteering for a little after-school transportation and some male role modeling for Travis.

  Would that be enough to satisfy those protective instincts? That need to take action that drummed through his blood? Shouldn’t the offer of neighborly friendship be enough to appease those rusty urges before he embarrassed himself by attempting to do things he was no longer capable of?

  A telephone rang in the bedroom behind the thin wall, breaking the silence of the night and giving John his answers.

  His hands stiffened into fists at his sides as he glanced at the clock. Midnight. They’d been hours without a line to the outside world, and now, at precisely 12:00 a.m. the phone was ringing in Maggie Wheeler’s bedroom?

  He swung a leg and a half off the side of the bed and reached for a shoe and the prosthetic propped against the bedside table. For months he’d attuned his ears to the subtlest nuances of sound, warning him of enemy movement in the middle of the night. For years before that, he’d learned to pick up on the sounds of human distress amidst the popping and crashing sounds of a burning building and roaring fire hose.

  John concentrated on the methodical process of twisting the prosthetic into place until the suction of the tailored fit engaged, locking the false leg to his own.

  Don’t listen. Don’t eavesdrop. Don’t notice.

  But the ringing phone wasn’t half as alarming as the panicked words he couldn’t quite make out, followed by a slamming sound and a scramble through drawers and a closet next door.

  He couldn’t wait and wonder. It wasn’t in him to sit and do nothing. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  John pulled the elastic band into place over his knee joint, grabbed his T-shirt from the foot of the bed and hurried out the door. A quick glance up and down the hallway revealed no signs of movement, only shadows and the security light by the elevator doors. Was that…

  His eyes zeroed in on the door to the stairwell next to the elevator. Had he imagined that gap between the door and frame? A sliver of light from the landing blinking out as the door closed?

  “Hey!” His hopping, hobbling gait got him to the end of the hall in a matter of seconds and he pushed open the swinging steel door. The staccato of running feet echoed up from several stories below. What the hell? John jumped down to the third step in pursuit of whoever had been lurking on their floor. He nearly pitched forward on the fourth step, caught himself on the sixth and slowed his pace to keep his balance as he circled the middle landing.

  Frustration poured through his system, telling his body to go faster. Maybe if he’d had on his running leg, he might have a chance of catching the guy. But the perp was speeding up and he was slowing down. John was halfway to the fifth floor when he heard a door slam open down below. The distant door closed again and he knew he’d never be able to catch the guy.

  Swallowing his pride and changing strategy, John switched course and jogged back up the stairs. There was still no other sign of activity on the seventh floor when he stopped in front of Maggie’s door. He knocked softly. Knocked again. “Maggie?”

  He heard a shuffle of noise from inside the apartment, including one unmistakable rasp and click of metal on metal. John had been in the military long enough to recognize the sound of a bullet sliding into the chamber of a semiautomatic. He stepped to one side of the door, out of the potential line of fire, and knocked again. “Maggie, it’s John. You can lower your weapon. Open up.”

  A shadow passed over the peephole, then the chain and dead bolt disengaged and the door opened. Wavy copper hair hung loose and danced over the dotted skin of Maggie’s shoulder. She wore long pajama pants, a pair of tank tops and carried her GLOCK 9 down at her side. She’d opened the door just wide enough to flash him a smile he didn’t buy. “It’s late.”

  He wedged his shoulder against the door to keep her from closing it. “Tell me about it. You went to bed an hour ago.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Old construction and thin walls. Your bedroom butts up to mine.”

  Her cheeks flooded with heat, and then he felt her shoving against the door. “Well…stop listening in, you Peeping Tom. Or whatever you call a spy like you.”

  What John lacked in speed and grace he made up for in brute strength. He planted his foot, braced his hand against the doorjamb and refused to retreat. “Look, I’m not the only one spying on—”

  Her telephone rang again. She was wound up tight enough for him to see the leap of muscles beneath her skin. Then her shoulders sagged with some sort of surrender and she swung open the door. “Come on in. I don’t want to wake Travis.”

  John closed the door behind him and threw the dead bolt while Maggie dashed into the kitchen to pick up the phone. “Hello?” He reached the archway into the kitchen in time to see her steady her posture and repeat the greeting. “Hello?”

  The color draining from her cheeks told him as much as the gun in her hand that these late-night calls weren’t a wrong number. Without breaking stride or asking permission, John plucked the phone from her hand and demanded an answer. “Who is this?”

  A startled huff followed by the sounds of labored breathing were punctuated by a man’s voice. “You can’t have her. She’s mine or nobody’s.”

  Adrenaline burned through John’s veins at the stark threat. “Listen, you son of a—”

  The line abruptly disconnected.

&nb
sp; John replaced the cordless phone in its charger, making a quick note that the woman needed caller ID before facing her. “Maggie?”

  “What did he say?” She was staring at the phone, rubbing her free hand up and down her right arm. She shook as though a cruel prankster had just dropped a bucket of ice down her back.

  “Doesn’t matter.” John reached out to touch her shoulder and she turned and walked right into his chest. Automatically, his arms wound around her. The thin layers of material between them gave him a clear impression of her healthy curves, shower-fresh scent and trembling fear. It was choice, not instinct, that made him shift his stance to draw her more fully against him and rest his chin at the crown of her soft, fragrant hair.

  He didn’t know what kind of danger this woman was facing, but he’d be damned if she’d face it alone. He felt a sob of heat against his neck, but there were no tears falling. She was rattled, stunned, too cold for his liking.

  “Who was that? Same guy who called before?” He gently pried the gun from her grasp and she curled all ten fingers into the front of his T-shirt, burrowing against his neck and chest. Her breath stuttered across his skin like a whispered caress. Her hips and thighs lined up squarely against his as if she’d been built to fit his big, brawny frame, yet there was no doubt that she was feminine and soft in every way he was not. He set the gun on the counter and flattened his palm near the small of her back, along the cool strip of skin exposed beneath the hem of her shirts and the low waist of her cotton pants. And even though his body awakened and warmed at the needy, full-body contact, John wanted answers. “Easy, Sarge. You’re okay now. You tell me who was on the phone, what he said to you and what the hell is going on around here that has you so spooked.”

  * * *

  “THERE WAS SOMEONE OUTSIDE? Why didn’t you say something?”

  Maggie picked up her gun from the counter, reloaded the magazine John had pulled out for safety’s sake, and dashed out of the kitchen. Parts of her were still a little numb, a little in shock from the midnight phone calls and how easily she’d turned to John for comfort. And parts of her were firing with a panicked need to find where these threats were coming from and squash them into dust.

  “You were a little preoccupied.” John followed her into the living room. “He was there a few minutes ago, before I knocked. That guy is long gone.”

  She wouldn’t believe it unless she saw it with her own eyes. If Danny had gotten this close to her home, this close to Travis…

  “Why didn’t you tell me there was an intruder in the building? Did you call 9-1-1?” She stopped at the front closet and slipped into her running shoes and windbreaker. She grabbed her keys and badge, stuffed them into a pocket and opened the front door.

  John’s big hand reached around her and caught the door before she could get out. “You’re chasing down a perp in your PJs?”

  The square jaw and hazel eyes and look that said she was behaving irrationally were right there when she spun around. Sarcasm bubbled up as she looped the chain of her badge around her neck and pushed him back a step. “I’m a cop. We go after people who break into buildings.”

  “Especially when they’re lurking outside your door at the same time you’re getting crank calls?”

  Not so irrational, after all, eh, big guy?

  Breathing out a muffled curse, John opened the door and nudged her into the hallway. “Lock it.”

  Maggie shoved her key into the dead-bolt lock. “You should go back to your apartment. You’ve already run the stairs once tonight and you’re not armed.”

  “Lock the damn door. I’m coming with you.”

  By the time she twisted the key, John was already at the stairs, holding the door for her. Maggie scooted past him to peek over the railing. There was nothing to see or hear as far as she could tell, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “Keep to the wall. I’ll take lead.”

  Despite the uneven rhythm of his gait behind her, Maggie was surprised to feel John at her heels every step of the way down the stairs. The dim wattage of security lights in the stairwell limited her vision to only a few steps at a time, frustrating her need to find the man who was turning the hard-won serenity of her settled world into a nightmare.

  Every time she checked a hallway and passed an empty landing, she mentally noted a clear report. John was right. Whoever had been outside her door was long gone or so well-hidden that she’d never find him. But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t give up on the desperate idea that catching Danny in the act of stalking her would be a simple see-him, catch-him, send-him-back-to-prison operation, and she’d be able to live a normal life again.

  By the time they reached the last flight of stairs without seeing so much as a pet cat moving about the building, Maggie’s adrenaline was waning and she was about to give up hope of putting an end to all the weirdness happening around her. Still, her training had taught her a thorough search meant inspecting every floor so that there were no surprises once a building had been cleared.

  She slowed her pace as they reached the garage level and put up a hand to warn John to stay behind her. “Let me go out first. There are plenty of places to hide down here. What are you… Let go!”

  John clamped his hands around her shoulders and forced her to an abrupt stop. She shrugged free of his grasp, but her protest stopped up in her mouth when he moved past her to feel the steel door and sniff the air.

  “I smell smoke.”

  “Where’s it coming from?” She took a deeper breath and the acrid smell stung her nostrils, shifting her concern from a man she couldn’t catch to the more immediate danger. She craned her neck back, looking up into the murky shadows of seven flights of stairs. “Travis.”

  “Don’t panic yet. Door’s cold.” John pushed open the door to the parking garage beneath the building. “The fire can’t be that big or that close.”

  Maggie followed him out and turned 360 degrees. Concrete, brick, cars, trucks, laundry room, storage area, elevator. She lowered her gun to her side and darted out toward the rows of vehicles. “Could it be an engine fire? I don’t see any flames.”

  She didn’t see any signs of movement either. The laundry room was empty, and a padlock on the outside of the tenants’ storage lockers told her their intruder must have run up to the street, ducked under the security gate and disappeared into the night.

  Maggie came back to the stairs and elevator. “Do you think the fire’s outside?”

  “No.” John didn’t look any more like a firefighter in his red running shorts than she looked like a cop in her pajamas. But there was something so methodical and focused in his movements along the wall that he inspired both confidence and an uneasy sense of pending danger. He was trusting his nose, not his eyes. He ran his hands along the bricks, traced his fingers along the seams of metal access panels and smelled the air. Maggie jumped when he snatched his fingers back as though one of the bricks had bitten him. “It’s in the wall. Localized from the feel of it.” He glanced from the stairwell door to the elevator, then up into the support beams over their heads. “That won’t last long if it gets into the infrastructure. There are all kinds of conduits behind this wall it can travel up. Phones, power, cable, heating and AC.”

  “The fire will spread to the seventh floor?”

  “To the whole building. I’m guessing your friend rigged it as a diversion. Crossed some wires, maybe jammed a match into the insulation.”

  Travis.

  Maggie spotted the fire alarm beside the elevator and ran to it. But John blocked her path. “We have to wake everyone up and evacuate the building,” she argued. “Travis is asleep.”

  “There’s no hammer.” He grasped both sides of the emergency fire box mounted on the wall. “One more thing Standage is responsible for that doesn’t work.”

  “Why do you need a hammer? Hit the alarm.”

  Instead, he wrapped his left hand around his right fist, flexed his forearm and shouted, “Don’t look!”

  Maggie jerk
ed her face away as he smashed his elbow into the glass front of the fire extinguisher box. The glass splintered and bowed. A second blow showered glass down on the concrete at his feet. She spotted drops of blood in the shattered mess. “John?”

  He set the fire extinguisher on the floor and pulled out the ax behind it. “Stand back!”

  “John!”

  With a mighty, home-run swing, he attacked a small hollow in the wall beside one of the electrical boxes. Chunks of brick and mortar flew out and Maggie dodged out of the way of the stinging projectiles. A second blow, a third, caved in the bricks. Wisps of smoke feathered through the expanding crevice.

  With a fourth blow, John hooked the ax head behind the brick facade and pulled down several chunks, revealing black char marks and smoldering insulation. “Maggie, get the extinguisher,” he ordered, swinging the ax against the wall with one last blow. The whole section of bricks tumbled out, forcing John back from the avalanche.

  If he was hurt or his prosthetic was damaged, he never let on. He dropped the ax and reached for the fire extinguisher, but Maggie pulled the pin and rushed past him, squeezing the trigger and spraying CO2 foam all over the insulation, wood slats, junction box and bricks.

  “You got it.” John squeezed his hand around hers, urging her to release her grip. “You got it, Sarge.”

  Maggie’s hand popped open and she let John pull the extinguisher from her shaking hands.

  “Are we out of danger?” she asked. “The fire won’t spread?”

  He set the empty red can on the floor and brushed the dusting of mortar and grit off his hands. He turned his forearm and, for the first time, noticed the gash above his elbow. “I don’t think we’re catching your intruder tonight. If he didn’t have us beat before, he’s had plenty of time to get out of the building while we were distracted with this.” He bent down and reached into the white goop she’d sprayed all over the opening. “Here’s our culprit.”