The Marine Next Door

by Julie Miller

  The lab had taken Danny’s lock and replaced it with a new one, but Lawrence jabbed his key at the lock as though he expected it to open.

  Not Danny’s lock.

  The shrine, the pictures of her life, the clippings taped to the wall—they hadn’t come from Danny. Danny hadn’t gone through her things.

  Maggie backed silently toward the door while Lawrence tried another key on his ring. The chemicals in the air, soaked into the wood and belongings all around her, were getting dense enough, toxic enough to make the open gash in her hairline burn.

  When the keys didn’t work, another man might have cursed. But Lawrence, with the strength of an ox and a chilly lack of outward feeling, leaned his shoulder into the wooden frame and barreled into it.

  While wood splintered and chicken wire was pulled from the staples that held it in place, Maggie lengthened her silent steps toward the exit. The door was in reach now. She could turn, twist the knob…

  “Don’t leave me.” She heard a small snap of sound behind her.

  Maggie’s blood froze in her veins. She slowly faced Lawrence again, expecting to see the gun pointed at her face.

  Instead, he held a burning cigarette lighter.

  “Don’t do this, Lawrence.” If he dropped that lighter… “You don’t want to hurt me. Danny wanted to hurt me.” She wondered how thick the fumes had to be before the air itself caught fire. “He ruined my truck and said terrible things to me. But you wouldn’t do that.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the garage. “You just saved my life. Danny wanted to kill me. But you saved me. You have to save me again.”

  “I love you, Maggie.” His bulgy round eyes glistened with tears. From the volatile chemicals? Or from the emotion that cracked his voice? “Not the way Danny did. My love is pure and true. My feelings for you have sustained me for a long time now. I’ve loved you from the moment Danny first mentioned you.”

  “In prison?” Get him to talk. Distract him. Stop him. “Did Danny talk about me when you shared a cell with him?”

  “Every night. Your picture was so pretty.” He glanced toward the empty wall of the storage locker. “I have more pictures of you in here. I come here to look at you, where I can be closer to you.”

  “You saved all those pictures of me?”

  The lighter snuffed out, but he clicked it on again. “You look so strong, but Danny said you needed to be taken care of. I’m good at taking care of people.”

  “Yes, you are.” She forced herself to focus on his eyes and not the flame. “A lot of people are going to die if you set this room on fire, Lawrence. The whole building will burn. Help me again. Please. Let me go warn the people upstairs.”

  He climbed over the broken frame of her locker and pulled out her winter coat. He hugged it to his nose and sniffed deeply, smiling as he pulled it away.

  Maggie watched in horror as he held the lighter to the hem of the coat and it burst into flame. “Boyle!”

  It was unnatural the way it caught fire so quickly. He’d doused it in the chemicals from his van. How many other things in here would turn to ash that quickly? Or would they simply run out of oxygen first?

  “I tried to take care of you in little ways,” he murmured as he watched the coat burn. Maggie glanced up to spot the sprinklers on the ceiling, then wrily despaired that they were probably broken and that Joe Standage hadn’t gotten them fixed yet either. “I sent you your favorite flower at work. I followed you to make sure you were safe. I kept Danny away as much as I could.”

  She’d backed all the way to the door. If she wasn’t cuffed, she could hide her hands behind her and open the door. Maybe she could even get it closed again before he fired off a shot.

  “You were nice to me, Maggie.” She was? When? “That day at the police station—after Danny tried to hurt you—you reached out to me. You touched me again that night I came to help Joe with the ants.” She’d grabbed him to stop him from contaminating a crime scene. He thought that meant she cared? “Danny let the bugs out in the building, you know. He wanted a reason to come in and see you. But he won’t do anything like that again.”

  “Let me go, Lawrence,” she begged, watching the coat shrivel as it burned. “I have a child to raise. If you truly love me, you’ll let me go.”

  “I do love you, Maggie.” The bug eyes blinked and turned. “This is the only way I can keep you from ever being hurt again. This is the only way we can be together.”

  He dropped the coat into a puddle on the floor and the pool of chemicals exploded into toxic white-and-orange flames.

  “No!” Maggie screamed and spun toward the door, but the fire raced along the floor behind her. In mere seconds, the entire door was a wall of burning wood and chemicals.

  She was trapped between a killer and certain death.

  * * *

  “ANSWER YOUR PHONE, damn it!”

  John raced through the city—his siren blaring, the lights on his truck flashing.

  Twenty-four minutes without hearing a word from Maggie. She should have called him in ten. He’d tried her cell and the apartment. Nothing.

  He swung through an intersection, screeching as he careened onto the street that would take him to The Corsican. He’d already put a call in to Spencer Montgomery to warn him that Maggie might be in danger. He’d left two messages with Joe Standage, one asking when Maggie had checked in with him and another demanding that he get off his sorry butt and go find her.

  Three blocks away.

  He tossed the phone onto the seat beside him and gripped the wheel tighter. Driving his modified truck with his left foot was getting easier, but at this speed, even a man with control over two good feet had to be careful.

  He could see The Corsican’s brown facade rising above the buildings and trees.

  Two blocks away. One.

  “I’m comin’, Sarge.” Be alive. Be strong. “I’m comin’.”

  He’d promised to keep her safe. He’d promised himself.

  John stomped on the brake and fishtailed around the corner, crashing through the parking garage’s security gate that thus far hadn’t kept out any threat to Maggie. He skidded to a stop at the base of the entrance ramp. The entire level was filled with smoke.

  “Hell.” He lowered his window half an inch to take a sniff of the swirling black fumes. “Ah, hell.” He picked up the phone beside him and punched in 9-1-1. “This is John Murdock out of Station 23.” He wheeled the truck around and sped back up the ramp to clear the entrance. “I’m reporting a fire at 11387 Mediterranean Drive—The Corsican. The basement level is engulfed with smoke. From the smell of things, it’s a chemical fire. I’ll begin evac.”

  He drove his truck around to the front of the building and jumped out. Why the hell weren’t the building alarms ringing? “Maggie!”

  He grabbed a mask and helmet from the kit in the back of his truck and charged up the stairs. Inside the first-floor doors he could see the smoke, along with a toxic cloud of chemical gases, puffing up through vents and cracks. The fire had to be downstairs. Good. That meant relative containment if KCFD got here fast enough. Bad if enough air got to the source and flashover occurred. Then the whole building could light up in a matter of minutes.

  If whatever chemicals those were didn’t blow the place to smithereens first.

  The businesslike assessment was done. His emotions were as under control as they were going to get. Time to move.

  Step One—hit the alarm. Thank God. The ear-piercing honk of sound should wake even the tenants with hearing aids.

  “Maggie!” Step Two—beat down Joe Standage’s door and determine the worthless charmer wasn’t home.

  Step Three? John slipped the oxygen tank over his shoulders and shoved open the stairwell door. He was a few years and a few injuries gone from being able to sprint up the stairs like a young stud like Dean Murphy. But he intended to be at Maggie’s door in a matter of seconds.

  * * *

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, John was working his way down
from the tenth floor.

  Maggie was gone. Missing. She’d never even made it to her apartment after reaching the building. He tried not to let the fear make him crazy, but this was so wrong that his heart was breaking with the thought that he was going to lose another comrade in arms. And there was no medal, no therapy that could ever heal the wound of losing the woman he loved.

  Ladder trucks and hoses were positioning themselves outside. Reinforcements were already in the building, clearing tenants from the lower floors. Because he was already on the upper floors, he’d agreed to go door to door to check for elderly residents who might still be in their apartments. He intended to open every damn door in the building to find the one Maggie was hidden behind.

  The Wongs were on their way down the stairs. He’d just gotten Mr. Cutlass and his cat out of their apartment. Now he was pounding on Miss Applebaum’s door. He could hear the sounds of a television inside.

  “Miss Applebaum!” She had about ten seconds before he busted down the door. “John Murdock here. There’s a fire in the building. You have to evacuate.”

  Five. Four. Three. Two…

  The door swung open to Joe Standage struggling to pull his pants up over his briefs. “Come on, Frances. We have to go.”

  John glanced beyond the half-dressed super to see his elderly neighbor pulling a bathrobe on over her nightgown. These two were in flagrante delicto? “Seriously?”

  Miss Applebaum buttoned her robe right up to the neck as she stepped into the hallway. “Joe was just fixing my faucet.”

  Right. So all the breakdowns and seeming incompetence that required so many repairs was just a cover for an affair? So no one had really been watching over the building. No one had taken responsibility for keeping Maggie and Travis safe. Not until the day he’d moved in.

  John might have laughed if the situation wasn’t so dire. He grabbed the older man by the arm on his way past him. “Did you see Maggie? Did she get home all right?”

  But he already knew Joe’s answer. “I’ve been up here most of the afternoon. But I never heard anything across the hall. The elevator was having fits, though. I was gettin’ set to go check it when it started running again. Went all the way down to the basement and stopped as far as I could tell. I’m gonna have to call the repair company again.”

  The elevator. Maggie’s worst nightmare.

  John hurried the older man along to the stairs with him, then passed him by. “Get Miss Applebaum outside to safety. There should be firefighters coming up the stairs to meet you.”

  “Where are you going?” Joe hollered after him.

  Into the heart of the fire.

  One way or another, he was going to find her.

  He just prayed it was the right way.

  * * *

  MAGGIE DROPPED THE BALL bat she’d knocked Lawrence Boyle over the head with and got onto her knees beside him. Thank God her son had been a fan all his life and she’d been too sentimental to get rid of any of his equipment.

  The dwindling oxygen in the storage space had made her kidnapper light-headed and disoriented anyway. So sneaking into the storage unit behind him had been more about keeping her own senses awake and sharp than about out-muscling the bug man.

  She dug into the pockets of his coveralls, searching for her gun. The key to her handcuffs was still in Danny’s pocket on the other side of the fire, so it was awkward to pull her battered body along the floor toward the area’s lone window.

  She put her nose right next to the concrete and tried to catch a breath. The flames had burned through Boyle’s chemicals, but they’d burned long enough that the wood-framed doors of each unit were now burning. The ceiling was charred and black with the flames from the walls.

  Maggie was roasting like a marshmallow over an open flame. The heat was cooking her skin. The smoke was stealing the breath from her lungs. The toxins in the air were stealing the life from her body.

  She’d been a victim of violent love, of obsessive love. But she wasn’t done with love yet. If Travis was her heart, then John Murdock was her soul. The fates couldn’t be so cruel as to deny her the chance at happiness she’d so recently discovered. Her own will wouldn’t allow love to be taken from her now that she’d finally found it.

  Maggie dragged the gun along the concrete floor. She thought she could hear a siren outside. She’d even imagined she heard someone shouting her name. But she was so tired. Her lungs ached.

  Breathe, Maggie. Fight. Live. Love John.

  “Some things are worth fighting for.” She whispered the mantra against the floor and then summoned the strength to push up to her knees. “I’m worth fighting for.”

  She raised the gun into the smoke and fired blindly toward the window. Her shots pinged and crashed off wood and concrete. And then she heard the explosion of shattering glass.

  Oxygen rushed in as the flames licked across the ceiling. She had to get out. She had to crawl, move. Now. Before that escape route was blocked, as well.

  “Maggie!”

  She hadn’t imagined her name.

  “John?” she croaked. Her throat was so sore, her lungs so full. She coughed and stumbled to the floor.

  More glass shattered. “Maggie!”

  She pushed to her feet and lurched against the wall. “John?”

  “Come on, Sarge. I’ve got you. Reach!”

  Maggie clawed her way up the wall, extended her hand. “John?”

  Big, gloved hands reached in through the broken window and latched on to her wrist. The hands pulled her outside and lifted her into strong arms.

  “Sarge?” Definitely John’s voice. “I need a medic over here! She’s bleeding!” And then she was lying down on the ground. Fingers stroked across her cheek. Someone cursed. “Sarge, sweetheart, talk to me. Medic!”

  Maggie faded out for a few seconds until urgent hands put a mask over her face and cool, pure oxygen streamed into her nose and mouth. She blinked her eyes open to see The Corsican’s dull brown bulk towering in the distance. Bright yellow-and-white flames danced back and forth with the shower of water shooting up from the ground. Lights on bright yellow fire engines flashed on and off in her peripheral vision.

  And she saw beautiful green-gold eyes watching over her with such intensity that it made her smile.

  “That’s it, Sarge.” She was aware of the hand holding hers now, and of other hands, packing a bandage over the wound in her head. “You stay with me.”

  Despite the protests of the paramedic working on her, Maggie reached up to pull her oxygen mask down to her chin. “Travis?” she asked.

  “He’s safe,” John assured her. “Detective Fensom picked him up and is driving him here now. Danny?” he asked.

  “Dead. Lawrence Boyle, too, I expect.”

  “Boyle? The bug guy?”

  “It’s a long story. But not all the things that have happened were Danny’s doing.” She touched the bump on her forehead and winced. “Although he did do this to me.”

  “He’s lucky he’s dead, then.”

  She wondered if she would ever regret that Danny had been murdered. She didn’t yet. “Boyle shot Danny to save me. Seems all of Danny’s talk about me over the years got Lawrence to thinking I was some kind of ideal woman he wanted to take care of. He started the fire because he loved me.”

  “How is that taking care of you? That fire damn near got you killed. Forget it. Just tell it to the cops when they get here.”

  She nodded, happy, for now, to save enough strength so that she could turn her hand inside John’s and lace their fingers together in that way that had always made her feel close to him. “And John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve decided to move out of this death trap. I can’t live here. I can’t be your neighbor anymore.” There had to be a safer, happier, friendlier place to live somewhere in Kansas City.

  The paramedic mentioned something about stitches, but John shooed him away for a few minutes. “How about moving in with me? I’m dumping this
place, too. It tried to take you from me too many times—in too many ways. I’m thinking about buying a house, investing in something more permanent.”

  Maggie’s heart jumped at the idea of being with John. But she’d acted impulsively with her heart once before and had paid dearly for it. She needed to think about this step. She pushed herself up to a sitting position on the blanket where she’d been lying. She could see now that John was wearing a firefighter’s coat, and that his skin was as smudged and dirty as she suspected her own face was. He’d come for her the moment she hadn’t called. He’d been there for her just like he’d promised. He’d saved her.

  “I have Travis. I can’t just move in with you.”

  He scooted closer so that his damaged leg was propped up behind her back, supporting her. “I don’t like having even a thin bedroom wall between us. I want a family. I want a future. I want you. I love you.”

  She’d thought about it long enough.

  Maggie’s heart thumped loudly in her chest. She reached inside John’s coat to splay her fingers over his heart and feel its strength beating in time with hers. “I love you.”

  Tunneling his fingers into the loose hair at her nape, John dipped his head and covered her mouth in a deep, thorough kiss. Maggie wound her arm around his neck, pulling him close and answering with all her heart.

  A ten-year-old’s honest voice intruded. “Eeuw.”

  With a laugh, John pulled Travis onto his knees beside them. “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? The three of us together as a family? Isn’t that why you called me at the fire station that night?”

  “I guess.” Nick Fensom politely faded into the crowd and let the reunion unfold. Travis squinched up his face as Maggie pulled him into her lap and John swallowed both of them up in a hug. “I really just wanted you to teach me how to hit a home run.”

  John’s green-gold eyes looked downright mischievous as he leaned in to give Maggie another kiss. “That will be the second thing on my list.”