Free The Marine Next Door by Julie Miller

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