Free Maternal Instinct by Janice Kay Johnson

rudeness—and, heck, succumbing to curiosity at the same time—she asked, "How do you get up to the widow's walk?" They shouldn't waste the time, but…
    "Want to see?" St. Clair's expression was childishly delighted. "Come on."
    The circular wrought-iron staircase climbed inside a rounded turret. Nell felt almost claustrophobic as she followed, but the spectacular view cured her the moment they stepped outside on the pocket-size terrace atop the roof.
    " Ohh ," she breathed, barely aware of Hugh so close behind her he could have laid a hand on her waist.
    All of nineteenth-century Old Town sprawled below, the waterfront bustling as it must have when this house was built, and the first captain's wife stood here watching as her husband's ship embarked for China or a trip around the Horn to Boston. Morning mist receded over the strait. Out of it, a ferry emerged, horn sounding muffled.
    Turning—carefully, so she didn't bump Hugh—Nell turned her back on the water to see modern Port Dare stretching like an ugly anachronism along Highway 101, and beyond the strip malls the dark-green wooded foothills and the snow-capped tips of the first peaks in the Olympic Mountains rising beyond.
    "It's glorious," she concluded.
    St. Clair smiled in satisfaction. "I have breakfast up here every morning when it isn't raining."
    Hugh cleared his throat, his impassivity a damper. "Perhaps we should get started with our questions."
    That same wryness appeared. "Certainly." He nodded toward the door behind Hugh. "After you."
    In the living room, he offered coffee, which both officers declined. Do not break bread. Nell almost never accepted food or drink from civilians when she was on the job. Or off it—most of her friends were other cops, firefighters or dispatchers.
    Hugh already had his notebook flipped open. "Please tell us when you were first aware that someone was shooting a gun in the building."
    "I heard a babble of voices out in the hall. Jerome—" he swallowed "—Jerome and I went to see what was up. Figured the stock market was crashing, or—" He stopped. "Something normal. Something you would expect. You know?"
    Nell nodded encouragement.
    He rubbed his hands over his thighs. "Somebody—I think one of the secretaries—said she'd gotten a call from downstairs. Some crazy had a semiautomatic and was shooting the place up. We should get out."
    "Did anybody?" Hugh asked.
    "We argued about whether it was a hoax. And if it wasn't, how the hell we could get out. What if the elevator stopped at the wrong floor and the guy gunned us all down standing there? And the stairs… I mean, maybe he'd hear us and take us down in the stairwell." He made a sound. "It just sounded so … out there. Couldn't be happening."
    "What did everybody do?"
    His laugh was choppy. He didn't want to meet either of their gazes. "Argued some more. Could we disable the elevator? Lock the doors to the stairs? Somebody was sure they couldn't be locked, that they're designed to be fire escapes, and somebody else thought we should leave them unlocked if people flee from downstairs—although why the hell would they come up?" Now he did look at them, as if for answers. Neither had them.
    "We talked too long. We suddenly saw that the elevator was rising. Everybody dove into their offices. I felt like an idiot, but I pulled binders out of that cabinet to make space. Jerome…" He rubbed his hands on his thighs again and rocked slightly. His face worked. "He'd already gone back to work. It was a goddamn joke, he said. He had work to do."
    "And then?" Nell prompted gently.
    "I heard the elevator door, then footsteps." St. Clair was sweating again. "I was scared sh —" He swallowed the obscenity with an apologetic glance at Nell. "I tried to squeeze in that damn cupboard without the metal clanging. I heard this one sound. Not even a word. Just the beginnings of a strangled yell, and then a gunshot." His body shuddered at the recollection. He was rocking again, sweating,