by Julie Miller
Maggie swung her flashlight around to peer into the storage unit where John had stopped. Her storage unit.
She curled her fingers through the chicken wire that lined the open frame of the door. Her heart plummeted to a place as dank and dark as the brick walls and wooden framework around her.
Those were her things inside the modest 6 x 6 cubby, recessed like so many others into the basement walls of The Corsican. There was Travis’s tricycle she hadn’t been able to part with, the collection of baseball bats that got bigger and heavier with every year and the high chair she might never need again but had been too sentimental over to part with.
That was her card table and folding chairs, set up as though someone was expecting company down here. There were her winter clothes, out of their boxes and draped over the chairs as though someone had been trying them on or sorting through them.
And then there were the pictures. Not her pictures. Pictures of her in shades of gray from a dozen newspapers. Taped all over the back wall. There was the task force article from the morning Journal that mentioned her name. There was a photo of her taken when she’d earned her sergeant’s stripes. Every other officer who’d earned a rank that year had been cut out of the group picture. And there were others. A yellowed, faded image of her and Danny’s engagement announcement from a naval base newsletter—she hadn’t kept a copy. The lone color photograph was one of her crossing the street in front of the Fourth Precinct office. It looked as though it had been taken from above by someone standing on the top floor of the Fourth Precinct parking garage. With the greenery and sunshine of a clear spring day in the background, she knew it had been taken within the past few weeks, maybe even the past few days.
They’d been looking for signs of tampering with breakers, fuses and wiring. They’d checked windows and doors throughout the ground and basement levels, looking for any building access that was broken or had accidentally been left unlocked. Except for the main door and the security gate to the parking garage—both of which required a passkey or typed-in code—everything at the Corsican seemed to be locked up just fine. So how had he gotten in here? Any sense of normalcy she might have felt, any sense of privacy or security, rotated on its axis. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you’re not. You’re in control, remember?” John went to the window at the end of the passageway and reached up to inspect it. “It’s sealed tight.” He swung his beam into the rafters above them. “In fact, they could use a little ventilation down here. Looks like the main door is the only access. When was the last time you were here?”
She thought back to when she and Travis had brought down the boxes of winter coats and extra blankets. “When the weather started warming up. I brought those clothes down.”
“So that’s been a couple of months.”
“About the same length of time Danny’s been out of prison.”
“And no one else noticed it?”
“Maybe it just happened.”
He returned to her side to shine his light over the creepy homage. “Let’s get out of here.”
Maggie was stunned by the violation of it all. Not only had Danny gone off the deep end with his obsession, but he’d also broken in and done it in her own personal space. “It’s like a shrine.” Her breath stalled in her chest. “Or a setup for a wake.”
“It’s a sick mind is what it is.” John’s fingers wrapped around hers to pry them off the chicken wire. “We need to report this. And I want to talk to Joe and the landlord about the security here. As far as I’m concerned, it sucks.”
“Wait. Not yet.” She liked the feel of her hand inside John’s sure grip, so she held on. But she planted her feet and only let him pull her away from the front of the unit. She wasn’t ready to leave this part of the basement just yet. “I don’t know what Danny’s game is, but I’m going to figure it out. Why did he do this? How did he do it?”
John relented on his efforts to get her out the door, but he pulled her around the corner into the main passageway that cut through the two rows of lockers, probably so she wouldn’t have to see Danny’s handiwork. “Okay, then, let’s think about this. All the tenants have a key to the main door dead bolt, right?” Maggie nodded. “So who has a key to the locks in here?”
“Just me.” She suddenly thought to pull the ring of keys out of her pocket and went back to her locker. “I mean, every tenant puts his or her own lock on their individual storage unit. But everyone in the building has a master key to get into the catacombs here.”
Maggie tried her key in the padlock on her door. When she couldn’t get the key to slide in, John took it from her hand and tried it himself. “It doesn’t fit.”
“This isn’t my lock.”
He dropped the keys into her palm, then snugged her hand inside his and pulled her back. “That thug probably cut yours off to get inside, then replaced it with his own lock.”
Now she was ready to leave and call it in. “I think breaking and entering is enough to put Danny back in jail for a long time and keep him there. Especially because he committed the crime against his former victim.”
Something long and skinny crunched beneath Maggie’s shoe. She tilted her flashlight down to the floor and backed up. “Eeuw.” A line of large black ants were streaming from beneath the storage locker across from hers and disappearing under the door frame of her locker. Although the ants had now changed their path to curve around the squished carnage of her shoe, they just kept coming. Hundreds of them. Thousands, even. “Look at all of them.”
“Carpenter ants.”
“Joe said Miss Applebaum found some in her apartment. He went in and sprayed them for her, I guess. They must have relocated down here.”
“Which means they’re probably throughout the building by now.” John didn’t sound any more pleased to see the tiny invasion than she was.
Swarms of anything had always been a bit of an ick factor for her, but as Maggie and John stepped over what had looked like another crack in the floor until their lights showed it to be a moving, living thing, she had another disturbing idea and stopped. “What would draw them all the way down here? You don’t think there’s something else in my locker, something…rotting? Dead?”
“Don’t worry. They eat wood. Besides, we’d smell it if something was dead.” He wrapped his fingers around her elbow and kept her from going back to see Danny’s artwork again. Together they headed toward the garage. “These ants aren’t as destructive as termites, but they’re not good. Just one more reason to add to the list of why I never should have moved into this place.”
Maggie tugged against his hand and glanced up at him. Was he already thinking about leaving?
With only the hint of a smile to warn her, he leaned in and planted a quick, firm kiss on her lips. “Don’t worry, Sarge, you’re on the list of reasons why I’m glad I did.”
Maggie was smiling, too, by the time they left the storage space and reentered the parking garage. She liked seeing John smile. He was usually so serious and guarded. The flash of boyish teasing warmed her heart.
She’d liked the faintly possessive stamp of that kiss, too. Although she’d never imagined she would enjoy any man showing possessive tendencies around her again, there was something healthy and respectful, and completely new about the way John liked to hold her hands or take her arm, to subtly touch her—or kiss her. It was like falling in love for the first time all over again.
He made her feel important. He listened. He got angry…on her behalf. John made her feel like a woman worth caring about, not a punching bag or vessel for sex or thing a man owned the way Danny had. He made her believe that with the right man—with John himself, perhaps—that it was okay for her to love again.
She walked to her truck to pull out a spool of yellow crime-scene tape and marked off the entrance to The Corsican’s storage locker, giving herself time to sort through those new feelings. She tried to decide if trusting John also meant she could trust herself enough to act on
those feelings. But final decisions about her heart and trust and awakening desire would have to wait.
As soon as she was done securing the scene, she put in a call to dispatch. John was still poking around in walls and crevices while Maggie paced in front of the storage entrance’s yellow tape and finished her call.
“I’d write up the report myself, but because it’s my stuff…I want everything to be by the book. Thanks. Hey, can you patch me through to Nick Fensom?” She covered the phone while she was being transferred to speak to John. “He’s the detective who interviewed Danny. Nick booked him into a cell overnight, but if he’s looking at Danny as the Rose Red suspect, then he’ll want to see this.”
“That’s not the only crime in town, Sarge.” John joined her next to the open doorway. “Even if he’s not the rapist KCPD is looking for, he still needs to be put away for stalking you like this.”
The dispatcher was on the line again. So much for an immediate response. “He’s out? Could you just copy him on this report? And give him my number. Yeah, a unit to watch the place in the meantime would be great. Thanks.”
Before she ended the call, John’s cell phone rang. He pulled the phone from his belt and flipped it open to answer. “Hello?” He turned to face Maggie. “This is John.”
His eyes locked onto hers, warning her that the call was important.
“Trav, where are you?”
Maggie darted to John’s side. Fear made her blood run cold. This couldn’t be happening again. “What’s wrong?” She tugged on the sleeve of John’s polo and stretched up on tiptoe to put her ear closer to the phone. “Why did he call you?” she whispered.
John put up a hand, asking her not to panic. “Yes, I know where your mom is.” Then he twisted his wrist to check his watch. “Then you’ve got half an hour before practice is over. I’d be happy to come and get you, but I know she’s planning on it.”
Was her son in trouble again? Abandoned at the ballpark? Maggie grabbed John’s phone and rocked back on her heels. “Travis, are you okay? Is somebody there with you?”
“Mom?” She knew that tone. She’d heard it before when she’d caught him bringing a garter snake into the apartment. When he’d painted his own set of roads on the carpet of his bedroom to run his cars and trucks. He was up to something he shouldn’t be.
“Where are you?”
“At Abbott Field. I’m on the bench, waiting for my turn to bat.”
“Coach Hernandez is with you?”
She hated the slight pause but appreciated the honest answer. “He’s on the mound pitching. Hey, did you know I caught a fly ball today? Off Jimmy Stecher? He’s our best hitter, but I got him out.”
Great news, but missing the point. “Why would you think I wasn’t picking you up today? Yesterday was just a fluke. I told you I talked to Chief Taylor and he said I could work my new schedule around yours.”
“Well, I just thought…could we eat dinner with John again tonight?”
Huh? Maggie glanced up at John, who bent his head toward hers to catch more of the conversation. “Sweetie, we can’t invite ourselves—”
“And maybe…you could wear a dress.”
“A dress?” John’s curious eyes narrowed on her.
“And some lipstick like the lady on TV.”
“Why would I wear a dress for dinner? Did you tell John you couldn’t reach me again? My phone is turned on—you didn’t even try.”
John’s green-gold eyes swept down her dusty uniform and lingered on her legs. “Do you have a dress?”
Oh. Maggie’s mouth dropped open. Heat crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks—partly from the hungry appreciation darkening John’s eyes, and partly from learning that her ten-year-old was already wise enough in the ways of men and women to understand that showing a little skin—well, showing something a little more feminine than starched pants and a flak vest—could get a man’s attention. And, apparently, he desperately wanted her to get John Murdock’s attention. She snapped her mouth shut and turned away to focus on the call. “We don’t even know if John has plans tonight.”
“Ask him.”
John’s warm breath danced across the back of her neck. “If that’s an invitation to dinner, I accept.”
“Mom?”
Say it, Maggie. You know you want to. Do it. She glanced over her shoulder to the man standing behind her. “Would you like to come to dinner at our place tonight?”
Travis probably jumped off the dugout bench. “Yes!”
She turned her attention back to her son. “It’s just a dinner invitation, young man. You have to go to bed early anyway. You were up too late last night.”
“Mom, a guy has to eat.”
“A guy has to eat.”
The same phrase echoed in both ears at two different pitches. She might be in trouble. Not a bad kind of trouble, for a change, but a very unfamiliar kind.
She covered the phone and pulled it from her ear. “My son really likes you.”
“That works out well because I really like him.”
“He may not understand exactly what he’s doing, but I think he’s playing matchmaker with us.”
An unexpectedly devilish grin teased the corners of John’s mouth as he leaned in. “Good.” His lips brushed across her nape, discovering a bundle of sensitive nerves and short-circuiting all thought and concern. “As slow as you and I are moving, somebody needs to.”
“But—”
John circled his hands around the front of Maggie’s waist and pulled her back against his chest so he could nuzzle his way along the side of her neck. Although she couldn’t feel his body through her vest, she could definitely feel what his lips were doing above her collar. Her mouth opened in a noiseless gasp as a zillion little pinpricks of pleasure danced along her skin, chasing along the path where John’s moist breath and patient, thorough lips heated her skin.
Who knew she had an erogenous zone right there? Who knew she even had an erogenous zone? Her pleasure had certainly never been the goal of Danny’s sexual encounters.
“You like that?” John whispered against her ear.
She was barely aware of the “Mom? Mom?” in her ear.
But she wasn’t so starved for male attention that she’d forget she had a young eavesdropper on the line. She tilted her head away from the sensual assault and tugged at John’s arms, trying to work some space between them so she could talk to her son in a fairly normal tone. “Travis, I’m on my way to pick you up in just a couple of minutes. That’s great about catching the fly ball. Be thinking about what you want to have for dinner. Love you.”
“Bye, Mom.”
When she handed the phone back to John, he used her outstretched hand to turn her. And then his mouth was back, sliding over hers. He slipped his palm beneath the collar of her uniform to cup and soothe the sensitized skin at her nape. But his fingertips were teasing wisps of hair free from the bun there. His tongue was in her mouth, exploring the soft skin inside.
Her tongue darted out to shyly play with his. Her hands were at his face, stroking the square line of his jaw, testing the rugged angles of his cheekbones, discovering the tantalizing contrasts of his warm scalp and short, spiky hair.
Heat blossomed inside Maggie, making her vision hazy, her hearing muffled. Her lips and tongue and fingertips seemed supernaturally aware of every taste—coffee and something tangy and sweet from lunch—and every touch—warm, sun-leathered skin, supple muscles moving underneath.
She felt her own body straining against the stiffness of her uniform, responding to John’s embrace. She felt the greedy hand squeezing her bottom, the fingers loosening her hair.
She felt her holster butting against her hip, and the Kevlar solid as a wall between them. Reality check. She was a thirty-five-year-old woman of the world. She wore a gun and a badge. She had a son waiting for her at baseball practice. She had a job to do.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who made out with a man in a parking garage. At least, she nev
er had been.
“John, I’m on duty.” Maggie leaned back, struggling to get some of the cool, dank air around them into her lungs to calm her senses. Yet she couldn’t help wanting a taste of the salty skin along his jaw. Her brain cells were fighting to remember sanity and decorum, yet she ached at the subtle difference in textures on his skin as she pulled her fingers along the column of his neck, tracing healthy skin and scars down to the strong pulse beating at the base of his throat. “You’re on duty, too, aren’t you? We have responsibilities. You can’t just kiss me like this.”
“Then you need to stop kissing me back.” His deep voice was a husky caress, a dare, a promise.
Maggie pressed her feverish lips against his. She kissed him again, more gently each time, lifting her hands to cradle his jaw and look up into his eyes. “What’s going on with you? You seem…different.”
John pulled back with a heavy sigh that stirred the tiny tendrils curling around her face. “You know, you’re the second woman to say that to me today.” He moved his wayward hands to a more neutral location at either side of her waist, and rested his forehead against hers, giving her some of the space she asked for without releasing her entirely. “Maybe I am a different man. It’s like something finally woke up inside me today. Here I was, in a perpetual mood over never being able to go back to my old life. When I think, all along, I was meant to move on to something new.”
“Me?”
“I don’t know. But doesn’t it feel right? I’m way out of practice, though—maybe I’m misreading the signs.”
“You’re not.” Thank goodness he wore his hair like a marine, or her hands would have left it a rumpled mess. Still, she smoothed her fingers across his forehead as if there was a need to straighten the short spikes there. “Look, you can’t be more out of practice at starting a relationship than I am. I really like you, John. I feel safe with you. But—”
“If you tell me you just want to be friends—”
“But I need to take it really slow. I’ve got a ten-year-old son. He idolizes you now, but I want you to get to know him. Some days he’s an old man, trying to take care of me, and some days, he’s still such a child. Plus, I’ve got a lot of emotional baggage that comes with me.” She turned her head toward the disturbing shrine in her locker. “And I’ve got that kind of crap to deal with.”