“Ma’am?” Peabody, squatting in front of a long toolbox, lifted his head. “You’re saying this elevator’s done this before?”
“No, it’s never fallen before. Usually it just stops between floors. It’s old and unreliable, but I never thought it would—” She waved a hand toward the jimmied doors and shivered.
“It shouldn’t have crashed.” Cal glanced to Riley for confirmation.
“All elevators are equipped with a braking system in case something goes wrong with the lifting mechanism.” His academy pal guided Libby to a chair in the lobby and had her sit. Kneeling in front of her, Riley lifted Libby’s wrist to check her pulse.
“So what happened to the brakes?” Her tone was understandably high-pitched and tinged with frustration.
“I’d like to know the same thing,” Cal said, turning to Peabody. “I know I’m not in the department anymore, but I’d like to go with you guys when you check out the operational system.”
Peabody shrugged. “No skin off my nose. We’re headed up with the rest of the squad as soon as we check you for injuries.”
“I’m good. Just bruised,” he told Peabody, waving him off.
The door to the stairs flew open, and Stan Moore strode out. He scanned the lobby and, finding Libby, hurried to her. “Dear God, Libby. What happened? Someone said the elevator crashed. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just shaken.” She shook off Riley’s hands when he tried to check her pupils. “I’m fine!”
Cal placed his hands on Libby’s shoulders, and she tensed beneath his touch. “Will you be all right for a few minutes if I go with these guys?”
“Of course. Don’t be silly.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Stan said.
Cal sent Stan a wary glower then looked into Libby’s eyes, assuring himself she wasn’t hiding any lingering ill effects of their accident.
Libby cocked her head to a defiant angle, and sparks lit her eyes. “I’m fine. Go!”
Before she could pull away, he thumbed her chin up and brushed a kiss over her mouth. “I’ll be right back.”
With the taste of Libby on his lips, Cal followed the other firemen to the top of the building, to the penthouse area where the main elevator mechanisms were located. The cops were there already, along with the maintenance supervisor for the building.
Cal introduced himself to the other men and peered over a police officer’s shoulder while the seventy-year-old steel elevator cables were examined and the safety setting scrutinized.
“We just inspected the system a few weeks ago,” the maintenance man, wearing overalls with a name patch that read Howard Grimes, told the policeman. “The system is old, but it wasn’t unsafe.”
“You have paperwork on that inspection?” the officer asked.
Grimes nodded. “In my office. I’ll get it in a minute. But…I don’t think you’ll find answers to tonight’s system failure in the inspection papers. Look here.” He held one of the cables out. “This baby is made up of dozens of steel cords. Steel. They don’t just break.”
Cal shifted forward for a better look at the cable, the maintenance worker confirming his suspicions. An uneasy prickle started at the nape of his neck.
“Look at these ends,” Grimes continued. “The breaks didn’t come at random places. It’s a clean break, all the cords cut clear through at the same place. Except right here.” He pointed to one side, where a small part of the steel showed signs of distress and a jagged end. “Furthermore, there’s no rust or discoloration on the ends indicating this damage is old. The other four are just like this.”
“What are you saying?” the policeman asked, though his expression said he knew the answer but needed confirmation.
“I’m saying, someone did this. Someone took a good hacksaw, most likely, and purposely cut the cables down to this last couple cords. Weakened the cable to where the weight of passengers made the cab fall.”
“Sabotage?” Peabody asked, his tone stunned.
“The evidence is right here.” Grimes waved the blunt end of the elevator cable.
Cal stiffened. “What about the braking mechanism? Why’d it fail?”
“I don’t know that it did fail.”
“Then why did we crash?” Cal pressed.
“It takes a few floors for the cab to reach a speed that will trigger the safety setting. I’m guessing you were already at about the lobby before the last cables broke. Am I right?” Grimes asked.
Cal thought back. “We were at about the second floor.”
Grimes lifted a hand. “There you have it. Y’all hit the basement before the safety could set.”
The policeman flipped his notepad closed. “That’s all for now, Mr. Grimes, but I’ll need you to be available for questions in this matter later.”
Grimes wiped grease from his hands and nodded. “You got it.”
Riley grunted and shook his head. “Long and short of it is…someone set out to make that elevator fall.”
His best man gave voice to what Cal wanted to deny but couldn’t in the face of the evidence. A chill crawled through him, and he suppressed a shudder.
Peabody whistled through his teeth. “I guess that leaves only one question—beside who did this. Was this creep lashing out at the occupants of this building in general, or did he have a specific target?”
Cal’s gut twisted with a horrible suspicion the saboteur had gotten exactly whom he’d targeted. The only questions that remained were why? And how did he protect Libby from another insidious strike?
Chapter 10
Libby glanced across the dark front seat of Cal’s truck and studied the rugged lines of his face. The dim glow from the dashboard lights made the cut of his jaw seem harsher and the shadows around his eyes more pronounced. He’d been grim and silent since returning from his scouting expedition with the other firefighters. His somber mood didn’t do much for her own rattled nerves.
She chafed her arms, trying to rub out the chill that seeped to her bones despite the truck’s heater blowing full blast at her feet. Ugly images of their brush with disaster replayed in her head, and she trembled all over again. The horrifying screech of metal. The sensation of falling. The numbing jolt when they’d crashed.
She cast a longing look toward Cal’s hands, wrapped around the steering wheel and tight with tension. She recalled the dizzying effects, the lulling tranquility of his gentling strokes. Being back in his arms had been sweeter than she remembered.
Dang it! She gave herself a mental thunk between the eyes for her lapse of willpower, for losing control and giving in to her fears. She’d ignored the costs, ignored the fact that he’d shattered her life once before, and she’d crawled right back into Cal’s embrace at the first sign of weakness.
Libby groaned.
“What’d you say?” Cal asked.
Darn his hide for looking at her with such concern and compassion. She stood a chance of keeping her distance when he was stubborn and cocky, but she didn’t have a prayer when he turned on his charm, his kindness, his warmth.
“Nothing. I was just…thinking.” She faced the side window, avoiding the penetrating intensity of his eyes. “You never said what you found when you looked at the elevator controls. Could you tell what happened?”
She heard him sigh deeply. “Yeah. ’Fraid so.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sabotage. Blatant, malicious sabotage made that elevator fall.”
Libby jerked her head around to face Cal, her heart rate kicking up. “Excuse me?”
He cut a quick, sharp glance across the front seat. “The cables were cut.”
Libby’s mouth went dry. “My stalker?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
The last of her tattered composure disintegrated. Violent shivers seized her. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could make the past several hours, the past several weeks, the threat of her stalker just disappear. Though she kept her eye
s closed, she felt Cal’s worried gaze.
“Seems too big of a coincidence for anything else,” he said, his tone tight and rough. He pulled the car onto the shoulder and shifted into park.
A sour churning swirled in her gut. Tonight, the madman who’d been following her had drawn Cal into his web of evil. If the elevator had fallen more than the couple floors it did, Cal could have been hurt. Or worse.
The idea of something happening to Cal stole her breath, made her want to weep from the depths of her soul.
Beside her, Cal remained ominously still, deathly quiet.
In the distance, a siren wailed.
“Libby…” Cal’s jaw tensed, and he rubbed his thumb along the scar on his chin. “This cretin could have killed you tonight. I know you think you can handle this on your own, but this is no time to let your willfulness override common sense. I know you’ve told the police about him, but…what have you done to protect yourself?”
Libby twisted a button on the front of her blouse, her fingers still unsteady. “I’m being careful. The locksmith changed the locks at the house today and—”
“Locked doors? That was fine when we thought he was just some Peeping Tom type. You said he was just playing mind games and trying to scare you. But he’s tried to hurt you now. This is much more serious than you let me believe.” Cal blew a deep breath through his teeth. “You have to do more. Much more.”
She huffed and twisted harder on the button. “I hate the idea of rearranging my life because this creep took a notion to terrorize me. I won’t let him control and manipulate me out of fear.” She sliced the air with her hand for emphasis.
Cal dragged a hand over his face and muttered an obscenity Libby was just as glad she couldn’t make out.
He took her chin in a firm grasp and raised her head.
“Do you own a gun?” he asked, his voice low and lethal. And disturbingly sexy. The deep rumble slid over her and coiled low in her belly.
Libby attacked the button again with a vengeance, fumbling, twisting, trying not to think about how Cal’s soothing tones had relaxed and seduced her in the dark elevator. How warm his hand felt on her skin even now.
“Yes. I have a gun, and I know how to use it.”
He snatched her pocketbook off the floor and began rifling through it.
“Hey!” She grabbed the purse back.
“Where? Where’s the gun? What kind?”
“It’s not in there. I keep a .22-caliber locked in a box in my nightstand.”
“Hell of a lot of good it’s doin’ you there!”
“I bought it for home security. I never intended to carry it with me. It has to stay locked up because of Ally. And because of your parole. I had a chat with your P.O., Mr. Boucheron, last week. He warned me to keep all firearms locked up to be in compliance with your parole terms.”
“My parole,” Cal grumbled and rubbed his eyes with two fingers. “Damn it!”
“But I don’t want to carry a gun, anyway.”
“Libby—”
“No, Cal! I won’t cave to his scare tactics. I will not live my life looking over my shoulder. I spent most of my childhood being afraid of something. The temper of my mother’s newest boyfriend or the landlord kicking us out for unpaid rent. I was scared of roaches and rats and creditors. But I learned to live with my fears because the roaches and rats and creditors weren’t going to go away. You deal with problems and move on.”
Cal’s brows knit over eyes full of compassion. “Was it that bad? I thought you told me—”
She held up a hand to hush him. “The point is, I got out of there. I put my childhood behind me, and I don’t ever want to live my life ruled by fear and intimidation again. As long as I don’t give in to his terror tactics, I am in control. Not that creep.”
He continued to stare at her with an odd, discomfiting expression. His look said he could read her mind, see clear to her soul. “What did your mom’s boyfriend do?”
Her pulse tapped a wild, restless cadence.
“Excuse me?” she asked, pretending not to know exactly what he was asking.
He stroked the side of her face with his knuckles, and the tenderness of his caress nearly made her cry.
“Your mother’s boyfriend. Why were you scared of him? What did he do to you?”
She pulled away from his touch even though her every instinct clamored for her to climb over the truck’s center console and into his lap, into his arms. It would be so easy to lose herself in his sweet embrace and block out the ugliness haunting her.
“It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. It’s in the past, and I don’t want to talk ab—”
“It does matter.” He caught her chin in his fingers again and brought her head around.
The care and concern in his laser-blue gaze blasted her defenses. The warm, soap-and-woods scent of him made her head spin, her heart hurt.
Damn it. Tonight she was too tired, too shaken, too vulnerable, to fight his assault on her senses, his pull on her emotions.
“I was a complication he didn’t want to deal with.” The words slipped free before she could stop them. God, she didn’t want to relive those memories. Yet with Cal beside her, his strong but tender hands cradling her face, she felt safe. Safe enough to face the ghosts, purge her soul. “His way of dealing with me was…to lock me in…the closet.”
Cal winced, but his eyes held steady with hers, probing, comforting.
“He’d leave me in there for hours. Days. Until my mother came home and found me.”
“Came home? Where would she be?”
She shrugged. “I never really knew. A friend’s house, at work, off somewhere getting drunk, or maybe in jail drying out.”
“How old were you? Where was your father?”
“Ten, and I don’t know who my father is. He was a one-night stand.”
“Aw, hell, Libby. I—”
“One time, Jimmy disappeared for several days.” She plowed on. Numbly, she sorted through the events that had frightened her for so long, offering Cal a part of herself she’d never shared with anyone. “He left me in the closet for…four days…or so. Alone. In the dark.”
Cal closed his eyes and cursed.
“A neighbor finally heard me banging on the walls and investigated. I was dehydrated and weak from starvation, so they sent me to the hospital for a few days.”
“Why didn’t they send you to a foster home after that, for God’s sake!”
The anger in his voice reached deep inside her, wrapping around her heart. No one had been outraged for her when it happened. She’d been something to be pitied, another sad statistic. But no one had cared enough to fight for her, to protect and defend her. Yet Cal was outraged on her behalf….
“Because my mother didn’t do it. Jimmy left then. He never came back. Besides, I couldn’t leave my mother. She needed me to take care of her, to help manage things when she couldn’t. Paying the bills and buying the food and—”
“Geez, Libby, do you hear yourself? You were a child! It’s not your job to take care of your mother. She was the parent. Where was she when you needed her?”
Tears burned her throat, crept into her eyes. “Not everyone is lucky enough to have the picket-fence childhood you had, Cal.”
He flinched, and the lines of his face deepened. “I may have had a picket fence, but my childhood was hardly ideal.” He paused, and pain flickered in his eyes.
What old wounds did he harbor from his youth? Sympathy plucked at her. She felt a new connection to Cal. Maybe they had more in common than she thought.
He gave his head a brisk shake. “I’m not the issue here. You are. And what happened to you.”
She pulled away from him. “I don’t see how rehashing my history is going to change anything. I made it out of that roach-infested closet, and I worked two jobs to put myself through college and law school.” She poked her chest for emphasis. “I survived because I didn’t let my fears win. I took control of my life and made somethin
g of that little girl who was left in a closet to die.”
Tears spilled onto her cheeks, and when she wiped her eyes to clear her vision, she found moisture clouding Cal’s eyes, as well. The sight of tears puddling in his azure gaze hit her with the force of a kick in the chest.
“Damn right you did. My Libby’s a fighter.” His smile had a bittersweet edge. “It’s one of the things I admire most about you.”
He admired her? While she reeled from the words he’d tossed out so casually, he pulled her close and sucked the moisture from her cheek with a kiss. Her body vibrated with the landslide of sweet sensations that rushed through her. She angled her head and found his mouth with hers, needing him, wanting him so much it was a physical ache. He soothed her with the hot press of his lips before backing away and resting his forehead on hers.
“Guess I understand now what happened in the elevator. Why you wigged out on me. Understandable, considering.”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have lost it. I should be past it by now. I—”
He silenced her with another deep, shattering kiss. She knew she should stop him. She needed to pull away before the magic of his stroking lips drew her completely into his spell, made her forget all the reasons why falling for Cal again would be a mistake. But the gentle caress of his mouth scattered rational thought. She wanted to sink into the sweet oblivion he offered. Just for a little while.
Tunneling her fingers into his thick hair, she pulled him closer, canted forward and angled her chin to better receive the heady ministrations of his lips.
A satisfied growl rumbled from his throat. He smoothed a hand over her hair, and she winced when he found a sore spot on her skull. “Ow.”
Putting her own hand up, she explored the sensitive area. “Guess I bumped my head when we crashed.”
“Maybe we should see a doctor, after all.”
“No. Just…please, just take me home.”
“With pleasure.” He stared into her eyes for another heartbeat then lifted her chin. He sealed his lips over hers, and she reveled in the heat and comfort of Cal’s kiss. Cal, who could always make her forget. Who could melt her with a look, a touch.
To Love, Honor and Defend Page 13