Framed!

A Military K-9 Unit Story

Suspected of aiding a serial killer, single dad Chase McLear is desperate to prove his innocence. However, someone’s determined for him to be found guilty—and now they’re targeting Chase’s little girl. Preschool teacher Maisy Lockwood’s father was one of the killer’s victims, but Maisy believes Chase has been framed. Can Chase’s K-9 beagle sniff out the evidence to clear his name before the killer makes them his next victims?

MAGGIE K. BLACK is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.

Also By Maggie K. Black

Love Inspired Suspense

Military K-9 Unit

Standing Fast

True North Heroes

Undercover Holiday Fiancée

The Littlest Target

True North Bodyguards

Kidnapped at Christmas

Rescue at Cedar Lake

Protective Measures

Killer Assignment

Deadline

Silent Hunter

Headline: Murder

Christmas Blackout

Tactical Rescue

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Standing Fast

Maggie K. Black

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08459-8

STANDING FAST

© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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“Did you have anything at all to do with the death of my father?”

Chase blinked as if something about Maisy’s bluntness surprised him. But then he looked down at her again, his gaze strong and unflinching. “No, ma’am.”

“Then how did my father’s cross end up in your home?”

“I have no idea.”

Her gut said he was telling the truth, but her brain was a whole different matter. If Chase was innocent, then was her faith in the team misplaced? Or was she wrong to believe the man now standing in front of her?

Neither option was a comforting one.

* * *

MILITARY K-9 UNIT:

These soldiers track down a serial killer

with the help of their brave canine partners

Mission to Protect—Terri Reed, April 2018

Bound by Duty—Valerie Hansen, May 2018

Top Secret Target—Dana Mentink, June 2018

Standing Fast—Maggie K. Black, July 2018

Rescue Operation—Lenora Worth, August 2018

Explosive Force—Lynette Eason, September 2018

Battle Tested—Laura Scott, October 2018

Valiant Defender—Shirlee McCoy, November 2018

Military K-9 Unit Christmas—Valerie Hansen and Laura Scott, December 2018

Dear Reader,

Have you ever felt like an outsider or been outside a group looking in? Eight years ago, I stood in a hotel lobby at the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference, trying to get up the nerve to go talk to a group of Love Inspired authors. There they were, sitting in a line under the escalator, typing away and talking about poison. I summoned my courage and admitted I wanted to write books like theirs. Lynette Eason invited me to sit with them and ask questions.

That day my life changed. I met my wonderful editor, Emily Rodmell, who edited this Military K-9 Unit series, that afternoon. A year later, I submitted a book, and while it wasn’t accepted, Emily provided me with helpful notes and Lynette encouraged me to try again. I did and one year later, Emily called to tell me Love Inspired would be publishing Killer Assignment.

Being part of this K-9 series, which includes books by some of my own writing heroines, is a dream come true. I really identified with Chase and Maisy, who both felt like outsiders, and I loved watching their romance unfold. I hope you enjoyed it too.

If you want to find out more about writing for Love Inspired, visit www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com, follow Emily on Twitter at @emilyrodmell or find her on Facebook at Emily Rodmell, Editor for tips and advice. You can find me on Twitter at @maggiekblack or at www.maggiekblack.com.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

Maggie

Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

—Ephesians 6:13

Thank you to my wonderful editor, Emily Rodmell, for including me in this, my first continuity series. Thanks as always to my agent, Melissa Jeglinski, who discussed series writing with me over chicken Parmesan.

Also, huge amounts of gratitude to Lynette Eason, Valerie Hansen, Shirlee McCoy, Dana Mentink, Terri Reed, Laura Scott and Lenora Worth for your support, guidance and friendship as I was crafting this book. I’m honored to write alongside you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

ONE

The scream was high-pitched and terrified, shattering the muggy darkness of predawn July and sending Senior Airman Chase McLear shooting straight out of bed like a bullet from a gun before he’d even fully woken up. Furious howls from his K-9 beagle, Queenie, sounded the alarm that danger was near. Chase’s long legs propelled him across the floor, clad in gray track pant civvies. He felt the muscles in his arms tense for an unknown battle, as the faces of the brave men and women who’d been viciously killed by Boyd Sullivan, the notorious Red Rose Killer, flickered like a slideshow through his mind.

Help me catch him, Lord, and end the fear that’s gripped the base!

Sudden pain shot through his sole as his bare foot landed hard on one of the wooden building blocks his daughter, Allie, had left scattered across the floor. He grabbed the door frame and blinked hard. His eyes struggled to focus on shapes in the darkness as his throbbing foot yanked him back to consciousness.

He was standing in the bedroom doorway of his modest Canyon Air Force Base bungalow. A humid breeze slipped in through the thick screen at the very bottom of his bedroom window where he’d left it ajar just a couple of inches to save using electricity on air-conditioning. The clock read twenty after five in the morning. His three-year-old daughter was crying out in her sleep from her bedroom down the hall.

Seemed they were both having nightmares tonight.

He started down the hall toward her, ignoring the stinging pain in his foot. The beagle’s howls faded to a low warning growl, which he suspected meant in Queenie’s mind the danger had passed. Had she just been howling because of Allie’s cries?

“No!” His daughter’s tiny panicked voice filled the darkened air. “Bad man! Hurt man! No!”

His brow creased. “Bad man” and “hurt man” were common themes in his daughter’s nightmares these days. He wasn’t sure why. Her preschool teacher, Maisy Lockwood, had assured him that many parents on base had told her their children had been having nightmares since Boyd had broken out of prison, killed several people and released hundreds of dogs from the K-9 kennels back in April.

But he’d done everything in his power to protect Allie from hearing anything about it—including the fact that because someone had apparently used his name when they visited Boyd before he escaped prison, Chase had been recently questioned as a suspect. It had been a little over three weeks since Air Force Investigations had first put him through the ringer, questioning his alibi for the night Boyd had broken onto the base. They seemed determined to pick a hole in Chase’s story that he’d been on a video call with a buddy he’d worked with in Afghanistan at the time. Even he had to admit the fact that he couldn’t provide the investigators with the video logs didn’t exactly make him look innocent. But his laptop had been stolen from his truck early the next morning, along with his toolbox and gym bag. He just had to hope the investigators would corroborate his alibi soon and realize they’d targeted the wrong man. He’d been doing a whole lot of praying in the meantime.

“It’s okay, Allie! Everything’s going to be okay. Daddy’s coming!” He reached her room. There in the gentle glow of a night-light was his daughter’s tiny form tossing and turning on top of her blankets. Her eyes were still scrunched tightly in sleep. His heart swelled with love for the little girl who’d brought such unexpected joy into his life. His voice dropped softly. “Hey, it’s okay. Daddy’s here. You’re safe.”

As he took a step toward her, his toes brushed something warm and soft in the darkness. A wet tongue licked his heel. He crouched down and felt Queenie’s small furry head under his fingertips. It had been just a few months since he and the electronic-sniffing dog had started training together, and already Queenie had attached herself to him and Allie as if she’d always been a member of their small, fractured family.

“Good dog,” he whispered, wondering how it would look to someone from the outside world to see a man who stood almost six foot four crouched down in a purple room with his arms spread between two such tiny beings, both of whom, in their own way, tugged on his heartstrings. Allie had been the one person who had given his life meaning and purpose after her mother, Liz, had shattered his heart, falling for another man and then filing for divorce while he was deployed in Afghanistan. And the small beagle at his feet represented the fresh start the K-9 unit would bring to his Security Forces career. He’d had enough of shipping off overseas to guard weapons transfers and depots in Afghanistan. It had been time to take on a different type of air force law enforcement work and become the kind of father his daughter needed him to be.

But now, it could all be snatched away. Someone who’d been accused of helping Boyd terrorize the K-9 unit, endanger the dogs and kill two trainers had no place in the kennels. So just three weeks before he and Queenie were due to graduate, their training had been put on hold while investigators decided whether to charge him or clear his name. He was just thankful Master Sergeant Caleb Streeter had allowed him to continue training with Queenie at home. The bond between trainer and dog was at a vital stage, and if they’d broken it now, Queenie might have had to have been retrained again from the start. Maybe she’d have even been reassigned to a different partner.

A loud crack outside yanked his attention to the window at his right. He leaped to his feet and started for the glass just in time to see the blur of a figure rush away through the bushes. His heart pounded like a war drum in his rib cage as he threw open the window. The screen had been slit with what looked like a knife and peeled back, as if someone had tried to get inside. He mentally kicked himself for assuming Queenie had been howling about Allie’s nightmares and for not doing a sweep of the room when he ran in earlier. But his focus had been on one thing—his little girl.

Lord, please help me be the man she needs to protect her!

He closed the window firmly, locking it in place, and cast another glance at where his daughter lay sleeping peacefully. Then he looked down at Queenie. “Stay here. Protect Allie.”

He left the dog curled up beside his daughter, ran back down the hall to his bedroom, pulled his Beretta M9 pistol from his bedside safe and slid a pair of running shoes on over his bare feet. Then he stepped out the back door, locking it behind him. The sky was dark, with only a sliver of pink brushing the horizon. He moved slowly and carefully around the side of the house toward his daughter’s window. There was no one there. But the footprints that scuffed the ground made it clear that somebody had been. Jagged edges of the screen ran from one side of Allie’s window to the other, like an ugly wound. Presumably, the dog’s howls had scared the prowler away. A prayer of thanksgiving for the small dog filled his heart.

As he moved away, something crunched under his feet. He bent down.

Half of the cherished macaroni-and-cardboard framed picture of Allie with her teacher, Maisy, was lying in the dirt. The picture that had been on his daughter’s dresser just hours ago. Whoever had slit the screen had reached in, grabbed the picture and torn it in half, ripping off the part of the photo with Allie on it and leaving just the preschool teacher’s image behind. Horror poured down his spine like ice. Someone had grabbed a picture of his daughter. But why? Who would possibly target his little girl? Boyd Sullivan, the Red Rose Killer, killed only those who he’d felt had wronged him in some way. Chase’s precious daughter was an innocent.

He held the damaged picture up to the glow of his back porch light. Maisy’s blue eyes sparkled up at him, filled with a happiness and energy that had only been matched by that of the little girl whom she’d held tightly in her arms. Petite and bubbly, with a spunky blond pixie haircut, Maisy had first caught his eye several years before he’d met Liz, when he’d been suffering through basic training under her notoriously tough father, who had been head of basic military training. At the time, so much as saying a quick “Howdy” to Chief Master Sergeant Clint Lockwood’s daughter would’ve gotten him more laps around the track than he’d been willing to risk. He thought he’d gotten over his foolish attraction to Maisy when he’d been deployed overseas, met Liz and settled into the rut of their unhappy marriage. Still, he couldn’t deny the fact that ever since coming back to Texas, the sight of Maisy’s smile still made those tattered corners of his good-for-nothing heart flutter something fierce.

The fact that his motherless little girl clearly adored her made that all the stronger.

He recalled the panicked news that had filtered through the base the morning of April 1, when Boyd had broken out of jail and continued his terrifying crusade against those he felt had wronged him. In addition to taking the lives of two trainers, he’d murdered Maisy’s father in apparent revenge for having once washed him out of basic training. That night, something had unexpectedly pounded so hard in Chase’s chest that he’d wanted to run through the base to find Maisy, scoop her up into his arms and promise he’d do anything in his power to avenge her father’s death. Instead, a nod and an “I’m sorry for your loss” at the Sunny Seeds Preschool gate had had to do.

Sudden footsteps sounded in the darkness. Bright light shone in his eyes. Voices shouted so loudly they seemed to be coming from all directions at once. “Hands up! Hands up! Get down! Down on the ground!”

Six members of the Air Force Emergency Services team swarmed his yard in full flak gear. Someone must have seen either him or the prowler in the bushes and called the police. Instinctively, he dropped to his knees and put his hands up as instructed, with his gun in one hand and the picture in the other.

“Hey, guys! It’s okay! This is my house. There was a prowler, but they’re gone!”

“Hands where we can see them, Airman!” The voice was brusque and male.

Chase complied. What was going on? True, he’d only been stationed back at the base for a little over a year, and before starting K-9 training, most of his Security Forces work had involved things like guarding gates and patrolling secure facilities. But that didn’t change the fact that these men and women in uniform were still his colleagues. He searched past the barrels of M4 carbine rifles and Berretta M9 pistols for a familiar face. From inside the house, he could hear Queenie barking. Allie’s wails rose. Cops rushed past him, kicking down his front door to get inside and fanning out around his small home.

“Clear!” voices echoed from inside his home.

“Clear!” came another.

What was this? What were they searching for?

“Let me explain,” he said, in the calmest voice he could muster. “There was a prowler. But they’re gone.”

No response. His teeth clenched. His heartbeat roared. Enough was enough! They were terrifying Allie, and for what? “Please! Let me go get my daughter!”

A sigh of relief filled Chase’s lungs as the tall form of Captain Justin Blackwood, head of the Boyd Sullivan investigation, stepped around the corner. Blackwood’s reputation as a stellar cop was beyond reproach.

“Sir!” Chase said, instinctively feeling his shoulders straighten and his fingers flinch, wanting to salute. “What’s going on?”

But any relief he’d felt melted away as he saw the grim frown on the captain’s face. “Airman Chase McLear. We have a warrant to search your premises. We have reason to believe you’re harboring Boyd Sullivan.”

* * *

Faint hues of crimson and burnt orange sky brushed along the edges of the horizon as Maisy Lockwood jogged down the sidewalk and through the residential neighborhoods of Canyon Air Force Base. Water sloshed back and forth in her metal water bottle as it knocked around inside the backpack that sat heavy on her slender shoulders. The sun had just started its climb into the morning sky, but already she could smell the humidity in the air. Today was going to be another scorcher.

The whole base is on high alert and you’re out jogging alone? The voice of her close friend and newlywed Staff Sergeant Felicity James filled her mind.

At least I’m not wearing headphones, she mentally argued back. As much as she missed pounding her sneakers down the pavement in time to the music, running without it was one of the many changes she’d made since Boyd Sullivan had escaped prison and broken onto the base to kill those his twisted mind thought had somehow wronged him. But giving up jogging around the base before heading into work at Sunny Seeds Preschool each morning, just like she had with her father every day for years before he was murdered, had been one thing she’d refused to let that demented killer take from her.

Something inside her needed that time to pray, and sometimes even cry, before opening the classroom doors each morning and welcoming the shining, hopeful little faces who counted on her to be the caring one who doled out hugs, wiped away tears and blew air kisses over bumped foreheads and scraped knees. They needed her to be at her best. So she mourned for the father whose approval she’d never quite managed to earn, knowing with each step that maybe if she’d gotten there just a few minutes earlier on the morning he was murdered by Boyd, he’d still be alive.

She blinked back a tear and tightened the pink bandanna that held back her hair. Her father’s basic training officer voice thundered through her ears. I’m not here to baby anybody’s feelings or hold anybody’s hand. There are two types of people in the world, the weak and the strong. Which one are you?

Weak. That was his implication. Just like her beautiful and delicate mother who’d died from a drug overdose when Maisy was thirteen, leaving her in the care of a man who didn’t do hugs and definitely wasn’t about to blow an air kiss over any of life’s wounds. At barely five feet tall, with two left feet, Clint Lockwood’s only child hadn’t even tried to take the air force’s physical test, much to his disappointment. A sudden lump formed in her throat. Their relationship hadn’t been perfect, true, but when Boyd had murdered him, he’d taken not only his life but Maisy’s hope that their relationship could ever be better. She swallowed hard. Her father had considered Boyd weak too. And the angry and disturbed young man had returned the day he’d escaped prison to get his revenge.

Red-and-blue lights flashed ahead. The sound of sirens mingled with the fierce sound of fearless K-9 dogs barking. Security Forces cops in combat gear swarmed a small bungalow. Her breath caught. Had police finally caught Boyd or the accomplice who’d been sneaking him on and off the base?

Please, Lord, may the nightmare finally be over. Help them catch Boyd before anybody else gets hurt!

As she approached the police operation, her footsteps faltered. There was someone ahead of her, crouched low in the bushes, watching the police operation.

They had their back to her and their features were obscured by an oversize hoodie and a black baseball cap. The figure seemed too slender to be Boyd. Could it be Boyd’s accomplice? Was it the anonymous blogger who’d been making people’s lives miserable with a steady stream of salacious gossip? Or even some paranoid Canyon resident who thought they needed to skulk in the shadows and disguise themselves to avoid the Red Rose Killer?

Maisy’s pulse quickened. She reached into her pocket, feeling for her cell phone.

The figure turned. A bandanna covered the lower half of their face. A knife flashed in their gloved hand.

Save me, Lord!

Instantly, she whipped her backpack off her shoulders and spun it around in front of her like a defensive shield. A heavy metal water bottle wasn’t much against a knife, but one way or another she’d go down fighting. Her eyes searched in vain for a glimpse of the figure’s eyes or anything solid to identify who they were.

“Stop right there!” she yelled, wincing at the way her own voice quaked. “Drop the knife! Right now! I mean it!”

The figure hesitated. Maisy’s limbs shook.

Help me, Lord! What do I do?

She wasn’t authorized to carry a weapon on base and the backpack wouldn’t do much. But there were large rocks encircling a nearby garden and she had a whistle on her key chain. Whatever it took, no daughter of Clint Lockwood was going down without a fight. The barking of Canyon’s K-9 dogs seemed to be growing louder, followed by the sound of even more sirens.

The figure lurched forward a step. Hot tears rushed to Maisy’s eyes as she steadied herself to fight. Then the figure turned and sprinted away through the base.

Relief washed over Maisy’s body and tension fled her limbs so suddenly she felt her knees go weak, nearly pitching her to the ground. Who was that? Had that knife been for protection or violence? She propelled her wobbly legs toward the cops, as her heart beat so hard in her slender frame. In the three and a half months since the Red Rose Killer had broken out of prison, it was like a deep fog of uncertainty and fear had descended over the base. Neighbors suspected neighbors. Colleagues viewed each other with suspicion. Stamping out gossip among her students was a daily task, and when parents arrived at the school, they hugged their children closer and were slower to let them go. Two of her friends, Felicity and Zoe, had quickly married the men of their dreams, rather than waiting a moment longer to start their happily-ever-afters. It was like everyone was a little more aware of how precious life could be.

Something crunched under her feet. She bent down. Her fingers reached for the glittering shapes, cupping them into her palms. They were seashells. No. Wait. They were dried pasta. Bright pink with gold paint splotches and coated in purple glitter, they were the same kind of pasta she used for craft time at Sunny Seeds, and unless she was very wrong, she’d helped one of her own students paint these very shells herself before painstakingly placing them on a cardboard picture frame—Allie McLear.

What would remnants of little Allie’s treasured frame be doing out here on the ground? Confusion gripped her heart again as the bright-eyed toddler’s face swam unbidden into her mind, along with that of her handsome, broad-shouldered father, Chase McLear. The students had made the frames and taken them home as a Valentine’s Day present for their parents and caregivers. She could still remember the sweet and chagrined look on Chase’s face the next day as he’d stood with his lanky form half leaning against the door frame to the entrance of Sunny Seeds and explained that Allie would like a picture of herself and Maisy to put in it, if she’d be okay with him taking one. She hadn’t been about to say no.

She’d always tried her best not to have favorites, but she had to admit that Allie had burrowed a meaningful place in Maisy’s heart. There was something special about the tiny blonde, motherless bundle of sunshine with vulnerable eyes and an eager smile. And if she was honest, she suspected Allie’s father was something special too.

While he’d told her that he was one of thousands of airmen who’d been trained by her father, she hadn’t actually met Chase before he’d been deployed to Afghanistan many years ago or spoken to him until he moved back to Texas and enrolled his daughter in Sunny Seeds. She’d vowed long ago that she’d never fall for a man in uniform. It was a promise she’d stuck to for all twenty-five years of her life. But she couldn’t deny that over the past few months she’d developed a bit of a crush on Allie’s father. Probably ever since the day the single father had first dropped Allie off in her care.

Her steps quickened as she recognized the house number and street from the Sunny Seeds’s attendance records. Police encircled Chase and Allie’s house. Were they in some kind of trouble? Had they been targeted by the Red Rose Killer? Please, no!

She started running toward the house. A small crowd of people had formed on the sidewalk. She pushed past them, her heart stuttering a beat as she caught sight of the tall and strong form of her friend Captain Justin Blackwood standing among the cops. What was the head of the Red Rose Killer investigation doing at Allie and Chase’s house? She ran for him. She had to tell him about the knife-wielding figure.

A hand in the crowd caught her arm. She turned back. It was the tall, blonde form of Yvette Crenville, the base nutritionist and someone else who she knew had been targeted and threatened by Boyd Sullivan thanks to a failed past romance.

“We’ve got to stay back,” Yvette said. She let go of Maisy’s arm. “They’re making an arrest. It might be Boyd’s accomplice.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Maisy said. She prayed Chase and Allie were all right. “I just saw a prowler in the bushes. I have to report it while there might still be a chance to catch them.”

“Could it be Boyd?” Yvette’s beautiful eyes went wide. “Someone reported that he was seen going in and out of that house.”

Chase and Allie’s house? “No, that’s not possible. One of my students lives there. Her father seems like a really great guy. There’s no way...”

Her voice trailed off, unable to find the words to finish the sentence. After all, Yvette had never expected that the man she’d once loved would turn out to be a serial killer. She ran toward Justin, even as she felt her gaze pull toward the house. Two cops flanked a tall and broad-shouldered man in soft gray track pants and a simple white T-shirt who knelt by the back door of the bungalow. His head was bowed and his hands were linked on top of his head.

Chase looked up, and his eyes widened as his gaze met hers through the chaos, and the previous stutter she’d felt in her chest turned into a jolt so painful it seemed to shock her heart’s ability to even beat.

No, no it couldn’t be. Her secret crush, and the single father of her favorite student, was being arrested for harboring her father’s killer.

TWO

Maisy watched, her head swimming in confusion and disbelief, as Chase stayed kneeling between the uniformed cops. Prayer filled her aching chest.

Lord, what’s happening? Did Chase really have something to do with Dad’s murder?

“Justin!”

The tall cop turned toward her, his lips set in a grim line. “Morning, Maisy. I’ve got to ask you to step back.”

Justin Blackwood was a tough and reliable captain, but even then, she’d never seen his face so serious.

“I just saw a prowler in the bushes with a knife!” she said, forcing herself to leave the question of Chase’s arrest for now. If there was even a possibility it was Boyd Sullivan, that was all that mattered for now. She pointed. “Over there. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. But they were thin. I don’t think it was Boyd Sullivan, but he’s been living in the woods for months, so who knows how much weight he’s lost. They had a hoodie and a bandanna over their face. They pulled a knife, but when I yelled they ran away. I think they had part of a picture frame Allie and I made.”

She held out her hand to show him the pieces she’d picked up. Justin’s face paled. In an instant he’d summoned two K-9 officers to his side and quickly took a detailed description of the suspect’s appearance from Maisy and the direction he’d gone. The cops and their canine partners took off after the suspect. Justin turned to Maisy.

“Are you okay?” Concern reverberated through his voice.

She nodded as something about the sincerity of her friend’s caring question made her voice catch. The single father of a teenaged girl, Justin had been someone Maisy had considered a friend for years. If she was honest, she suspected her father had been disappointed that no romantic spark had ever bloomed between her and the military police captain. She’d definitely noticed how the cut of Justin’s jaw and the intensity of his gaze had a certain attractiveness, which had turned more than one female head on base. But the fact that his obvious good looks had never had any impact on her personally had been one of the reasons she figured she was immune to the charms of any man in uniform—a thought that had promptly evaporated the moment Chase McLear had brought little Allie into Sunny Seeds and sent a thousand butterfly wings flapping in Maisy’s chest.

“I’m okay,” she said. “They didn’t threaten me or come anywhere near touching me. They just pulled a knife and then ran. Whoever they were, I wasn’t their target.”

Justin nodded slowly. She had a pretty good guess what he was thinking. In the several sightings of the Red Rose Killer since he’d escaped prison, one constant that remained was that he only killed people he thought deserved it—like her father—or that he needed something from to achieve that aim.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “Why are you arresting Chase McLear? Yvette said Boyd had been seen going in and out of his house. That can’t be true.”

He paused and his eyes rose to the sky as if he was trying to decide what to tell her.

“I know that different members of the investigative team have been chasing down a lot of different leads,” she added quickly. “I don’t expect to be kept in the loop about all of them and I know there’s a lot you can’t tell me. But Chase is the father of one of my students.”

Justin’s brows furrowed and for a moment, it looked like he was weighing his words before deciding what to say. “I can confirm that the investigative team received an anonymous tip that Chase McLear was harboring the Red Rose Killer—”

“But that’s impossible!” Maisy felt her hand rise to her lips. “Chase...I mean, Senior Airman McLear is a good man and a devoted father.”

A single eyebrow rose. “I assume this is your subjective personal opinion of the man from your interactions with him and not based on any specific evidence as to his relationship with Boyd Sullivan?”

Heat rose to her face. If she was honest, she wasn’t even sure why she was defending Chase so quickly and eagerly. There was just something about him that got to her. She’d always believed in Jesus’s teaching from “The Sermon on the Mount” that the true character of a person’s heart was known by the things he did. Despite his reserved exterior, she was convinced Chase truly loved his daughter. It was obvious every time she’d watched Allie barrel into his waiting arms at the end of the day. And sometimes when he met her gaze over his daughter’s blond curls, it was almost like she caught a glimpse of something lost and broken behind his deep green eyes.

“Senior Airman McLear says it was all a misunderstanding and that there was a prowler on his property—”

“And I saw a prowler with a knife,” Maisy interjected again. The slight narrowing of her friend’s eyes suddenly reminded her that as a friend and civilian she was being treated with far more latitude than anyone serving under the strict captain would have ever received for such an outburst. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m just really shaken by this.”

“I understand,” he said, but the firm timber of his voice let her know just how little impact her passionate defense of Chase would have on his investigation. “Senior Airman McLear has maintained his innocence. We will of course be taking his claims of a prowler seriously and hopefully my officers will be able to track down and catch the person you saw. I’m trusting you to respect the fact that there is additional information about this investigation that I’m not at liberty to tell you. But I do feel a responsibility to let you know this is not the first time this suspect has come to our attention. Now, I have to ask you, do you know if he had any kind of relationship or interaction with your father?”

“No.” She shook her head, feeling her sweat-soaked hair dance and fly around her head. “My dad was his basic training officer, but that was years ago.”

“Do you know if your father was particularly hard on him?” the captain pressed.

“My father was hard on a lot of people.” Especially her. Again, her eyes flicked to where Chase was kneeling, flanked by officers. Anger burned in his eyes, mixed with a quiet desperation bordering on panic, like a wounded animal desperately scanning the snare that had just trapped him. “Look, Chase can’t be working with Boyd Sullivan. I’m almost certain of it.”

The lines of Justin’s brow furrowed deeper. “Again, do you have any evidence to back that up?”

“No.” Her chest fell. She had a hunch and nothing more.

Was her blind faith of Chase’s true nature any different than Yvette’s had been about Boyd?

A frightened and furious wail seemed to break through the early morning air and rise above the chaos. A cop in flak gear was carrying a squirming and pajama-clad Allie out of the house. She recognized him. Lieutenant Preston Flannigan was the slightly pushy single father of one of the boys in her preschool.

“No!” Allie squirmed, fighting against the firm arms holding her. “Stop! No! I want Daddy!”

Sudden tears rushed to Maisy’s eyes. “What’s going to happen to Allie?”

“That’s up to Chase. We’ll be taking him in for questioning. Hopefully, he has someone who can take her. If not, we’ll arrange for a base social worker.”

A stranger? She knew the social workers on base were wonderful people who did a difficult job, but still, she couldn’t imagine how hard it would be on little Allie to understand where she was going and what was happening to her. She glanced at Chase. His face had paled with an agony that seemed to rip her own heart in half. No, she couldn’t just stand there and watch this happen. She took a step toward the little girl. “Allie, it’s going to be okay.”

Allie’s tearstained face turned toward her. “Maisy! I want Miss Maisy!”

Her little arms shot out, and Maisy felt her arms instinctively wrap around the child.

“Justin, I’ll take her to the preschool with me, if Chase is okay with that. She’s one of my students and watching her the extra hour before school starts is no trouble at all. I know her and she knows me.”

Concern rumbled in the captain’s voice. “Are you sure?”

Maisy’s eyes glanced from father to daughter. “Absolutely.”

“All right.” He led her through the crowd until they reached Chase. “Maisy has offered to take care of your daughter while you come in for questioning. Is that acceptable to you?”

Chase turned toward them and gratitude filled his gaze. “Yes, thank you. Please, don’t let her out of your sight. There was a prowler outside of my home this morning. They cut the screen on her bedroom window.”

Was that the same person she’d seen skulking in the bushes? She wanted to ask him more and tell him what she’d seen, but with Security Forces all around and little frightened Allie in her arms it would have to wait. “I’ll keep her safe, Chase. I promise.”

“Thanks,” he said again. “She’ll need to get dressed and changed. Plus, I haven’t fed her breakfast yet. She’s recently been refusing to eat cereal if milk touches it, but she’s okay with fruit...” His voice trailed off, as if his mind was struggling to figure out what else he should tell her.

“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “I’ve got a change of clothes for her in her cubby at the preschool. I bought some fresh fruit yesterday and I have frozen waffles and yogurt on hand for breakfast.”

The number of students who’d been having problems both eating and sleeping had increased since the Red Rose Killer had broken onto the base. She heard Allie’s babbling voice at her ear, and the toddler took Maisy’s face in both of her hands, turning the preschool teacher’s gaze away from Chase. Allie looked at her seriously. “Police broke my house, Maisy.”

“The police are just searching your house to make sure that you and your daddy are okay,” Maisy said, softly. “Like Queenie searches your house for things. Now, your daddy is going to help the police and you are going to come to school with me. We’ll have special strawberries and waffles for breakfast. Would you like that?”

Allie stuck her lip out. “Queenie comes too?”

Maisy looked down. A young beagle sat by her ankle. It looked up protectively at Allie in a way that told her that she wouldn’t be able to shake the dog, even if she wanted to. “Yes, of course. Queenie can come too.”

“Queenie likes waffles.” Allie tucked her head against Maisy’s chest and she felt the young girl shudder in the safety of her arms.

Chase met her eyes over Allie’s head again. “Thank you.”

“No problem. We’ll see you later.”

The pink-and-orange glow of a Texas dawn had deepened over the horizon. The first parents would be at the preschool ready to drop their kids off in a little over an hour. She started to turn away when she heard Justin calling her name. She looked back. The captain was striding toward them. Something glittered in his gloved hand. It was a sturdy gold cross, dangling on the end of a chain.

He stretched the pendant toward her. “Before you go, one of our officers just found this buried under the floorboards in Chase’s house. I was wondering if you could identify it?”

Her blood ran cold as suddenly as if she’d just plunged into ice. She nodded. Her mouth opened, but for a moment, no words came out. Justin Blackwood turned the cross over and the early morning light fell on the engraved words she’d so carefully chosen as a teenager years ago. I love you, Dad—Maisy.

Her heart sank to a place that was worse than disappointment or even sadness. “Yes, that’s the cross I gave my father for Christmas when I was thirteen, a few months after my mother died. Despite our differences, he wore it under his uniform and never took it off. When the Red Rose Killer murdered him, somebody stole it from his body.”

She could almost feel Chase’s gaze on her face, but she forced herself to turn away without meeting his eye. She didn’t even begin to know what to think. But the fact that it had now shown up in Chase McLear’s home made it a lot harder to hold on to the faint hope that the father of the little girl she now held in her arms wasn’t somehow linked to his murder.

* * *

“Stephen Butler, commissary cook!” Preston slapped the glossy photo of the corpse of one of the Red Rose Killer’s most recent victims down on the interrogation table in front of Chase. “Found dead behind a restaurant off base. Boyd Sullivan used his uniform and ID to sneak onto base after escaping prison. Did you lure him to the woods for Boyd? Are you responsible for this man’s murder?”

“No, sir.” Chase’s jaw ached and his lower back twinged with the reminder that he hadn’t stood or stretched in hours. But he wasn’t about to let his bearing relax. They’d brought him in for questioning in the same track pants and T-shirt he’d been wearing when they’d arrested him. Being challenged by uniformed men while in his civvies made the humiliation he felt even worse. But he wasn’t about to give in to the temptation to slouch.

An airman was an airman, even out of uniform.

His eyes roamed over the glossy picture of the dead young man. The Red Rose Killer’s first set of victims before his arrest had been linked by a common thread—they were all people who’d treated him worse than he felt he’d deserved. A homecoming queen who’d broken his heart, a high school bully and a gas station attendant who’d fired him had been the first three people he had killed. A woman he’d once dated and her new boyfriend rounded out the five murders that he’d gone to prison for. But since breaking out of prison, his targets had been more mixed. Some seemed to be revenge killings, complete with a red rose and a note left on the body. Others, like poor Stephen Butler, seemed to have been killed for practical reasons, like gaining access to the base or the kennels. Preston had already covered the first set of victims and had now moved onto crimes committed since Boyd had broken out of prison.

Captain Justin Blackwood stood stone-faced and impassive by the door, apparently content to watch as Preston conducted the questioning with the volume and aggression of an angry terrier that had cornered a rat. Chase wasn’t sure what that meant. Was the captain not as convinced of his guilt as the lieutenant was? He could only hope that the forensic team was taking the cut in Allie’s window screen, the torn picture and the footsteps in the dirt as seriously as Security Forces were taking their investigation into him.

When Lieutenant Ethan Webb had met him in a coffee shop three and a half weeks ago and told him his name had shown up on Boyd Sullivan’s prison visitor list, Chase had been both shocked and indignant; his frustration at just how ludicrous the whole situation was had shown in both his tone of voice and his body language. He still kicked himself for that. Growing up, his grandfather, Senior Master Sergeant Donald McLear, had drilled into him that a man and a hero always kept his chin high and his emotions in check. But the idea that he’d do anything to help Boyd Sullivan had been both insulting and laughable. How could anyone think he’d want to spend one minute in the presence of that monster? He’d expected his name would be cleared immediately and that whoever had used his name to cover their tracks had picked him at random. Even the fact that his laptop had been stolen from his truck, along with his gym bag and toolbox, had seemed like a cruel coincidence.

But any hope that he wasn’t being personally targeted, which had remained flickering in his heart, was completely snuffed out the second Captain Blackwood had held the late Chief Master Sergeant Clint Lockwood’s gold cross in Maisy’s startled face. The thought that it had been found under his living room floorboards chilled him to the bone. He’d been set up, no doubt about it, by someone who’d both been inside his home and had eyes on his truck. He didn’t know who and he didn’t know why. But one thing was certain—for the sake of his little girl, he had to clear his name.

“Landon Martelli and Tamara Peterson,” Preston barked, as he slammed the pictures of two more of Sullivan’s victims down on the table. “Both were K-9 trainers and murdered by someone who opened the kennel doors, letting about two hundred dogs go free. You don’t have an alibi for the morning this happened, do you?”

Chase fought the urge to cross his arms. “As I’ve stated before, I was on a video chat with a military contractor named Ajay Joseph, who I used to work with in Afghanistan, from four fifteen in the morning until my cell phone rang shortly after oh five hundred with an alert that Boyd Sullivan had escaped prison and let dogs loose on base. I paused the video call and went into the bedroom to answer my cell phone and spoke to Master Sergeant Westley James. When I returned to the living room, approximately eight minutes later, my daughter, Allie, was up and playing with Queenie and the video call had ended.”

“But you have no way to corroborate that story,” Preston interjected.

“That I was at home and on a video call when Sullivan broke onto base? No, I don’t. Because my laptop was stolen, along with my gym bag and toolbox, from my truck when I was off base and I haven’t been able to reach my contact.”

Preston smirked. Yeah, Chase knew how weak his alibi sounded. It didn’t help that he hadn’t been able to reach Ajay since then. But he was an Afghan, an independent contractor and a coordinator between locals and the United States Air Force. Ajay wasn’t stationed on base, and off-base communication in his part of Afghanistan had been unstable.

“Two dozen of the dogs Boyd let out of the kennels still haven’t been found, Airman,” Preston said. “Many of them had PTSD from serving their country and saving the lives of service members overseas. You recently transferred to the K-9 unit, didn’t you?”

Was it his imagination or did Chase pick up a hint of resentment in the lieutenant’s voice. It was no secret that Preston had done basic K-9 training as well but had yet to be paired with a canine partner. Did he resent that Chase had been partnered first? He hadn’t thought so. He’d have expected a man like Preston to be focused on getting a fierce and dangerous animal, who specialized in something like suspect apprehension, rather than a sweet little search dog like Queenie.

“Yes, sir, I did request a transfer to the K-9 unit,” Chase said. “Though, as I’m sure you know, completion of my training with the team is currently on hold until this mix-up can be resolved. I have the utmost respect for what the dogs in the unit and their trainers do to serve our great country. I hope the missing dogs are found soon.”

“I spoke to your old boss, Captain Reardon,” Preston said, “and she described you as a quiet man who kept to himself.”

Chase didn’t answer. He hadn’t been asked a question and didn’t like Preston’s insinuation that being private and quiet was somehow a crime.

“Why did you request a transfer?” Justin’s voice snapped his attention to the doorway. Chase blinked. He couldn’t remember the lead investigator asking any other questions since the interrogation had started. “Your previous career was security, correct? You guarded missiles, weapons transfers and installations in Afghanistan?”

“And personnel, yes, sir,” Chase said. “I requested a transfer because as fulfilling as it was to be overseas, serving my country on the front line, I couldn’t neglect my duty to my own daughter. Seeing the difference we were making in the lives of Afghan children made me miss my own. I figured my daughter deserved better in life than a daddy who she knew only through a video-chat screen, sir.”

Justin’s eyebrows rose. His mouth opened, like he was about to ask a follow-up question, and Chase suddenly remembered that Justin himself was the single father of a teenaged daughter.

The sound of another picture smacking the table yanked Chase’s attention back to Preston. He looked down and his heart ached. It was Maisy’s father, Chief Master Sergeant Clint Lockwood, lying on the floor in a navy blue PT uniform. A red rose was tucked under his arm. A dark pool of blood stained his crisp white shirt.

Maisy thinks I had something to do with this? Anger and sadness crashed over Chase like competing waves battling on the shore. The look of disbelief and doubt in her eyes when she’d looked at the gold cross was seared in his mind. It reminded him all too much of the look of defeat that had greeted him when he’d answered the overseas video call from his then pregnant wife, telling him that she’d given up on their marriage and fallen in love with another man who was “emotionally available” for her in a way Chase could never be. Liz had filed for divorce almost immediately. Thankfully a DNA test after Allie was born had proven she was Chase’s little girl. Even before Allie was born, Liz had decided to restart her life without them.

“Chief Master Sergeant Lockwood was my basic training officer,” Chase said, quickly, snapping his errant mind back to attention and filling in the information before Preston could try to hit him with another question. “It’s well-known by everyone who trained under him how tough he could be. He didn’t give me a rougher time than anybody else, and I certainly didn’t hold a grudge.”

Before Preston could speak, Justin asked another question. “What’s your relationship like with his daughter, Maisy Lockwood?”

“Much the same as I imagine Lieutenant Flannigan’s is, sir,” Chase said. “Polite and courteous, but not personal. My daughter is in her preschool, as his son is.”

Was it Chase’s imagination or did irritation flicker in Preston’s eyes?

“Then why were you holding a picture of her when you were arrested?” Preston snapped.

“I’ve already answered that question. There was a prowler outside my daughter’s window. I went outside to investigate and found the picture in the dirt. They cut the screen on Allie’s bedroom window, pulled the picture from her dresser and ripped my daughter’s face from the frame. My baby daughter’s picture is now in this person’s hands.”

He fought the urge to drop his head into his hands. Instead, his eyes rose to the ceiling as he prayed. Did they believe he’d cut the screen and scuffed the ground himself to cover his tracks in case someone saw Boyd near his home and called the police? Didn’t they get how ridiculous that would be?

“My name was used by someone visiting the Red Rose Killer in prison,” he added. “My truck was broken into. I was robbed. My home was invaded by someone who planted evidence under my floorboards. My daughter is in danger. I need to protect her. What you should be investigating is who is so intent on framing me.”

A quick, curt knock sounded on the door, interrupting wherever Justin was going with his next question. Justin excused himself and slipped out into the hallway.

“I don’t care what sack of lies you try to sell, I know you’re helping Boyd Sullivan,” Preston said. His lip curled. “A few scuffed footprints in the dirt and a hole in a window screen doesn’t prove anything. You’ve been sneaking him on and off base. You helped him kill these people and I will prove it.”

Chase felt his jaw clench. How could anyone possibly think he’d allow a man like Boyd in his home or near his daughter? He held his tongue and stared straight ahead as if Preston was nothing but a window and he was looking through him. Still, he couldn’t miss the dangerous glint in the lieutenant’s eyes. A lifetime in the Security Forces had taught him to spot a hostile element.

The door handle began to turn and Preston leaned forward so suddenly the table lurched.

“You better stay far away from Maisy Lockwood,” he hissed. “Take your little brat out of her school and never bother her again. Or I will make sure you pay.”

THREE

The lead investigator walked back into the room, giving Chase barely a moment to process Preston’s words before rising to his feet and saluting. Preston rose as well.

Justin’s eyes scanned their faces. “Everything all right, men?”

“Yes, sir,” Preston said.

Chase did his best to keep his face impassive. Preston’s determination to nail him was immaterial. Chase knew he was innocent.

As if he read Chase’s thoughts, Justin turned to him. “You’re free to go.”

So he wasn’t being charged? Did that mean they didn’t have enough evidence? Or did they think that if they let him go and trailed him, he’d eventually lead them to the Red Rose Killer?

“You are not being charged with any crime at the moment,” Justin went on, his face so steady he might as well have been carved out of marble. “We may wish you to come in for future questioning and appreciate your continued voluntary cooperation with our investigation. JAG can inform you of your legal rights going forward, including your right to cease cooperation and retain legal counsel. Don’t leave base without letting my office know. I believe the team has finished processing your home as well. You can collect your cell phone later this afternoon.”

“Thank you, sir.” Chase saluted sharply.

The other man returned the salute, and Chase was escorted from the building. But it wasn’t until he stepped inside the front door of his own Canyon bungalow that he let his shoulders slump and his bearing relax. Twenty minutes later he was showered, shaved and dressed in his crisp dark blue uniform, with its pale blue shirt, navy tie and laces tight on the leather shoes that were so well shined he could almost see the mess of the house that surrounded him reflected in them. He’d need to have the front door replaced before Allie came home. It still opened and closed all right, but the visible dent and damaged hinges would upset her. His bedroom and the living room had both been tossed, but nothing seemed broken—he was thankful for that—and his daughter’s room would only take a minute to set back to rights. Even the window screen would be easy enough to replace. He’d change the locks on the doors as well. A bigger problem would be repairing the baseboards and floor tiles. He’d carefully peeled back half a dozen of each to create little hiding places for electronic SD cards and thumb drives, as part of Queenie’s training, and this had no doubt seemed suspicious enough for deeper investigation. Now, patches of his floor looked like a sloppy and haphazard contractor had quit partway through the job. He took another deep breath, let it out slowly and reminded himself that the investigators had only been doing their job. They’d done it with the utmost of respect and professionalism too—for the most part. He ran his hand over the back of his neck.

God, what do I do? Who’s out to get me? How do I find them?

The red light on his answering machine was blinking. He pressed the button. The light and airy sound of Maisy’s voice filled his wrecked and damaged living room, as sweet and as comforting as a chilled glass of sweet iced tea.

“Hey, Chase? It’s Maisy. Not sure when you’ll get this message, but Justin...uh, Captain Blackwood said you wouldn’t have your cell phone. Allie wanted to give you a call to let you know we were having a good morning...” There was the sound of whispering and the scuffle of the phone changing hands.

Then he heard the voice of his daughter, Allie, sounding so tiny and little, and a sudden lump formed in his throat. “Hi, Daddy! Maisy let me have a special pink hair bow! And I had berries. And waffles. Queenie is here too. Say woof, Queenie! Queenie! Say woof, woof! Queenie doesn’t want to say hi. Bye!”

There was the thump of the phone falling, another scuffling sound and a pause that lasted so long he wondered if they’d forgotten to hang up. Then he heard Maisy’s voice again. There was an unmistakable strain of worry pressing through her light and cheerful tone. “Allie ate a lot of breakfast. She’s good. Felicity gave me a scoop of dog food for Queenie. We’re just going to hang out here and have a fun day. Give me a shout when you—”

The phone message cut off in a long beep. He sat down on the couch, feeling his heart beat hard against his rib cage. Then he played the message again, finding comfort in the sound of his daughter’s voice and Maisy’s reassurance. Did Maisy have any idea how much her act of kindness meant to him? His daughter had been screaming, his world had been falling apart and she’d been there for him, stepping into the chaos, reaching out her hands to his little girl, like a heroine plucking his daughter out of the rubble and into safety.

He’d never met a more beautiful, kind and generous woman.

* * *

Real men don’t whimper and they don’t complain. Nobody ever solved a problem by sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Unexpectedly, his grandfather’s voice echoed through the back of his mind. The Senior Master Sergeant had been in military intelligence long before Chase had been born and was proud of having gone to his grave never breathing a word of what his work had entailed. He’d been widowed when Chase was a baby, moved in with Chase and his parents and stepped into the role as head of the household, filling the void that was left behind by the hectic nature of his mother’s long and exhausting overnight shifts as an ER nurse and his father’s lengthy deployments overseas. He’d instilled in Chase at a young age that real men didn’t lose control of their emotions, ever, even if they were four years old and had broken their leg jumping off the garage roof.

Chase gritted his teeth and stood up. This was no time for self-pity. Someone was out to get him, and he had to find out who. That was never going to happen while he was sitting around thinking about some pretty preschool teacher.

If Security Forces wasn’t going to track down his alibi for the morning of the Red Rose Killer’s murders, he was going to have to do it himself. The fact that Preston had brought up his former boss, Captain Jennifer Reardon, in the interrogation had reminded him that there might be more than one way to track Ajay down. He dialed Captain Reardon’s office number. She answered on the first ring. “Morning, ma’am.”

“Morning, Airman.” The captain’s voice was clipped and her words precise. He often thought she spoke the way a sniper fired. “What can I do for you?”

He imagined word of his early morning arrest had already made it to her ears.

“I’m trying to track someone down,” he said, “and I’m hoping you could help. When I was in Afghanistan, I became friends with a local contractor named Ajay Joseph...”

“I can’t say I remember him,” she said briskly.

That didn’t surprise him. There had been hundreds of American servicemen and -women on the base, as well as hundreds of local contractors. She hadn’t been wrong when she’d told investigators that he’d been a quiet man who kept to himself, though he seriously doubted she’d put the kind of negative spin on it that Preston had implied. A certain inner calm was important in the kind of Security Forces work that involved protecting high priority targets for long and potentially boring periods of time, when nothing was happening and there was empty desert spread in all directions. He hadn’t socialized much with the broader team. Not because he hadn’t liked them, but because he was the kind of guy who’d always preferred just having a couple of close friendships.

“He was an Afghan contractor who helped as a local liaison to get our weapons into the hands of the right people on the ground,” he said, “and keep them out of the wrong ones. It’s very important that I speak with him as soon as possible, but I haven’t been able to reach him in weeks. I considered contacting your counterpart on the ground, Captain Teddy Dennis, but I don’t know him personally and never served under him directly.”

“May I ask what this is regarding?” Her voice was guarded and cautious, even clipped. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised.

Lord, I hate asking anyone for help. But I don’t have the resources to track Ajay down on my own.

“I need him to confirm a video communication we had on the morning of April 1,” he said, knowing the date would probably trigger the same shudder of familiarity down her spine as it did his. “Ajay and I used to be in a small Bible study together, and consider each other friends. He had been dealing with a tricky situation and was looking for my advice.”

Specifically, the young Afghan had been noticing some slight discrepancies in some of the weapons shipments and wondered if a fellow contractor was skimming off a few items to sell on the black market. Considering the desperate poverty some of his men were coming from, Ajay had been tempted to look the other way. But his new and growing Christian faith had been nudging him toward making a full report to Captain Dennis. He’d asked Chase to pray with him and had also promised to send through some supply records to get Chase’s second opinion. He didn’t want to ruin another man’s life until he was positive theft was actually happening. The supply record emails had arrived encrypted. In the chaos of Boyd’s breakout and the release of the K-9 dogs, Chase hadn’t managed to unencrypt them before his laptop had been stolen from his truck. When Chase had gotten a new machine and asked Ajay to resend the files, Ajay had emailed back saying the matter had been resolved. It had been nothing but an accounting error. He’d also said that his father was ill, so he was going to visit his family in the mountains. Chase had wished his father a speedy recovery. That was the last Chase had heard from him.

He was thankful Captain Reardon hadn’t pressed him for more information about the call. If Ajay had been right, and it had been nothing but an accounting error, he didn’t want the notoriously aggressive Captain Dennis firing Ajay’s crew over it.

“While we were talking, a phone call came in about the Red Rose Killer breaking onto base and releasing K-9 dogs,” he said. “We’d been on the call from four fifteen onward, which proves I wasn’t helping Boyd Sullivan on base that morning and was not involved in any of the crimes that took place. I got an email from him a few weeks ago telling me he was going to visit his family in the mountains and I haven’t heard from him since. But, as you can imagine, I’m quite eager to talk to him now.”

“While I don’t recognize his name, Captain Dennis did recently mention his main liaison with one of the Afghan independent contractors had recently left,” she said. “I assume we’re talking about the same man. Communication lines in the mountains are virtually nonexistent.”

“Did Captain Dennis have any idea when he’d be returning or how I could contact him?” Chase asked. “Do you know if Ajay’s company has anyone who’d be heading up into the mountains who could try to pass along a message for me?”

He ran his hand over his face. Maybe he should have gone to Captain Dennis directly.

There was a heavy pause, which he knew meant Captain Reardon was choosing her words carefully. “Airman, I know you’re frustrated. But you know that things don’t work in Afghanistan the way they do here. It’s the middle of the summer. The heat is extreme and we can’t expect one of our partners on the ground to send someone wandering through a war zone to find one man who might not even remember a conversation he had with you three months ago.”

He blew out a long breath. She was right and he should probably be thankful she was agreeing to talk to him at all under the circumstances.

“I understand, ma’am,” he said. “I apologize for putting you in this situation. I realize I’m grasping at straws. But my laptop was stolen from my truck and along with it any evidence of the video call. Someone threatened my daughter’s life this morning. There was a prowler outside her window who tried to cut the screen with a knife.”

She took in a sharp breath.

“Oh, Chase, I’m so sorry.” Her voice softened. “As I hope you can understand, my hands are fairly tied and there’s very little I can do. But I will speak to Captain Dennis directly today and ask if there’s any way he can speak to the man’s organization and access his computer logs. If he was using a base computer, Captain Dennis might be able to access the records himself and confirm when you spoke and for how long. I can also ask him if he knows of any way to contact him directly. Although, I would’ve assumed Security Forces would’ve already sought to access that information.”

So would he. But the almost gleefully vindictive look that had glinted in Preston’s eyes was now making him wonder. Was it possible Captain Dennis had already provided that information and investigators were so eager to see him hang that they’d discounted it? “Do you think I should contact Captain Dennis directly?”

“May I be blunt?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“You’re suspected of helping a serial killer who murdered several fine servicemen and -women.” Her voice sharpened. “You know what Boyd Sullivan has done to our community. His crimes and the fact that he’s still on the loose is tearing Canyon apart. Everyone you speak to is going to be under a cloud of suspicion and it could have an extremely unwelcome impact on anyone serving overseas if you start making calls on secured lines about accessing old video logs. I’m talking about how it will look, Airman, regardless of how innocent your intentions are. Let me talk to Captain Dennis. I’ll impress on him the importance of the situation and tell him to pass everything he can find directly onto investigators. You and I have served together. I have broad shoulders and can take a bit of heat. I’ve already been questioned about you once and I won’t be surprised if I face some additional questioning over this conversation.”

He hadn’t even considered how talking to Captain Reardon or Captain Dennis would impact their careers, their work or their teams. Suspicion was like a toxin. It had been spreading through Canyon Air Force Base for weeks now, poisoning hearts and infecting relationships. He prayed that neither of the captains would face any trouble for helping him.

“Let me assure you that nobody you’ve served with believes for a moment you have anything to do with Boyd Sullivan,” she added. “Hopefully, this will all be cleared up quickly. But, in my opinion, the best thing you can do right now is to lay low and let the investigators do their job.”

“Thank you, ma’am, and thank you for the help. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem, Airman.”

They ended the call and he set the phone back in its cradle. Relaxing was the last thing on his mind. He’d been framed for murder, his life was falling apart and he wasn’t about to sit around and wait for someone else to sort it. The uncharacteristic silence of his empty house surrounded him. He knelt in the mess and closed his eyes to pray. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been truly alone in his bungalow without his daughter and dog running around. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Questions tumbled through his mind like Ping-Pong balls in a dryer. His daughter’s frightened face filled his mind.

Help me, God. I’m in really deep trouble and You’re my only hope.

He opened his eyes and set out for Sunny Seeds Preschool.

* * *

“Doggy, Doggy, go find the phone!”

Maisy sat cross-legged on the brightly colored carpet in Sunny Seeds Preschool’s large open classroom and chanted along with her students and classroom assistant, Esther Hall, as little Allie whispered the search command in Queenie’s ear. Then Maisy let Queenie climb off her lap and into the circle. The children giggled as Queenie walked over to each one and sniffed them in turn. Then the small dog trotted off in the direction of the dress-up corner. Eleven small shining faces watched her go.

“Queenie finds phones!” Allie had explained to Maisy when they’d first gotten to the preschool. The toddler had then whispered something in the dog’s ear and then Queenie had walked over and sat neatly in front of where Maisy’s phone was on the table, and refused to move until Allie had patted her head. “I gave her a command just like Daddy. Queenie finds computers too.”

Maisy hadn’t even heard of an electronic-sniffing dog, let alone expected to find one in such a small and adorable size. All the K-9 dogs she’d met had been large, majestic and formidable breeds, like rottweilers, German shepherds and Doberman pinschers. But when Felicity and her newlywed husband, Westley, had dropped by with some dog food, she’d told Maisy that Chase and Queenie had done the electronic search of her home back in April and found two listening devices. Westley had then explained that while ESDs were relatively new in law enforcement, they had incredible abilities to sniff out the smallest electronic devices on command, as small as tiny thumb drives and picture storage cards, no matter where a criminal hid them. A beagle’s small size and excellent nose made it the perfect breed for that kind of work. He said it seemed that while little Allie had been watching her father train Queenie at home she’d picked up how to give the dog the search command with the exact same tone of voice, intonation and gestures her father used. Ultimately, Chase would have to train the dog to ignore Allie’s instructions. At least, thankfully, it only seemed to be Allie that the dog responded to that way.

Even then, Maisy had been a bit skeptical until Allie got Queenie to sniff out each arriving parent who came to drop off their child and then reported back whether or not they were carrying any electronic devices on their person. If they weren’t carrying any, she moved on. If they were, she howled once, sat directly in front of their feet and stared.

She hadn’t gotten it wrong once.

So now, on top of the general excitement of having a small dog as a very special visitor at the preschool, the regular circle time had turned into a game. Maisy, with Allie’s help, held Queenie and theatrically covered the small dog’s eyes while her assistant, Esther, helped one of the students hide the phone, and then Allie would give Queenie the command to find it.

The coat hooks, book nook and building blocks hadn’t proven to be a challenge. This time Queenie sniffed around the costume trunk, then dove under the dress-up rack and disappeared in the costumes and uniforms for a second. Then her tiny furry head reappeared through the flowing fabric. She barked and sat. Maisy laughed. “Good dog.”

She got up from the circle, went over and stroked the small dog’s head. Queenie licked her fingers.

There was a short, polite rap on the glass window separating the classroom from the front hallway. She glanced back. Her breath caught in her throat. There stood Chase, dressed in his crisp, clean uniform blues, looking every bit like a hero as he had the day she’d first laid eyes on him. Unexpected heat rose to her cheeks. Whether he was guilty or innocent of the crimes he was being suspected of, Chase’s life was in serious danger. Her crushing on him like a schoolgirl was the last thing either of them needed.

Maisy broke his gaze and nodded toward where Allie now rolled on the carpet, giggling with Zoe’s son, Freddy. The little girl hadn’t noticed her father yet. Something softened in Chase’s eyes as he glanced at his daughter, but he shook his head slightly and pointed to Maisy. Then he stepped back away from the window and out of sight. Seemed he wanted to talk to her alone for a moment before he greeted his daughter. She wasn’t sure why, but once Allie caught sight of her daddy, Maisy suspected she wouldn’t be in a hurry to let him go. Maisy wanted to talk to him alone too, more than she’d realized. She needed to look him straight in the eyes, ask him if he was guilty and demand the truth about why he had her father’s cross.

Maisy turned back to the classroom. The other preschool teacher, Bella Martinez, who taught the class next door, and her classroom assistant, Vance Jones, had taken their students outside to the playground. No doubt, her students would enjoy the opportunity to play with the other kids.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” she said, keeping her voice light and cheerful. “Now I think it’s time for outside playtime. Everybody follow Miss Esther outside.”

She waited and supervised, keeping a watchful eye as the slender and dark-haired newly qualified teacher led the herd of children out to the shady fenced playground behind the preschool. Two years younger than Maisy and very ambitious, Esther was the granddaughter of base commander Lieutenant General Nathan Hall and never tried to hide that she was eager to run her own class and not be anyone’s assistant. But she was good with the students.

Maisy turned back to where she knew Chase would be waiting. She took a deep breath and prayed as she exhaled. Lord, is this man guilty of the crimes he’s been accused of? Help me be wise. Help me see the truth. Then she raised her chin and pushed through the door into the small entranceway. “Hello, Chase. Allie’s outside in the back playground. It’s fully fenced in and supervised.”

Although, since paranoia and suspicion had spread across the base, a handful of the more overprotective parents had argued a locked five-foot-tall fence wasn’t enough to protect their children from intruders. The preschool director, Imogene Wilson, had installed extra security cameras and keypad locks on the playground doors, but still some parents were demanding the school take down the beautiful and colorful picket fence that Maisy herself had painted and replace it with a much taller chain-link fence with barbed wire on top. One or two other parents wanted to cancel recess and field trips altogether. Thankfully, so far the preschool director hadn’t given in.

Chase stepped back, nearly bumping into a cheerful hand-painted wooden sign of smiling fruit proclaiming Hugs Happen Here! He was so tall the top of her head barely came up to his chin, and not for the first time, she felt her eyes lingering on the strength of his arms and the breadth of his chest.

“Maisy, hi.” His voice was oddly husky, as if there was something caught in his throat. Sad eyes searched her face, looking even more lost and alone than when he’d first walked into her preschool. “I... Honestly... Well...” Then Chase closed his mouth again and shook his head as his words failed him. If she’d ever seen someone in need of a hug, it was him. He swallowed hard. “How’s Allie?”

“She’s fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “She was pretty confused and upset at first, as is to be expected. But she’s a strong kid and very resilient. I let her take a pink hair bow out of the birthday box, which calmed her down a bit. She helped me make toaster waffles and fruit for breakfast and showed me how to get Queenie to hunt for cell phones.”

He chuckled. “Did she now?”

“When Felicity and Westley brought over some dog food, Westley said to mention that before you integrate Queenie to the K-9 unit you’ll have to train Queenie not to take commands from anyone else,” she said, “including Allie. Although, he suspects Allie’s only able to do it because she’s done a really good job figuring out how to mimic you. She’s a really smart kid.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as if it stung to be reminded of his training with the K-9 unit that Westley had also told her was on hold while he was under suspicion.

“I don’t know how to begin to thank you,” he admitted. “Everything I can think of to say seems so inadequate considering what you did for us.”

“How about giving me a straight and truthful answer? Did you have anything at all to do with the death of my father?”

He blinked as if something about her bluntness surprised him. But then he looked down at her again, his gaze strong and unflinching. “No, ma’am.”

“Then how did my father’s cross end up in your home?”

“I have no idea.”

Her gut said he was telling the truth, but her brain was a whole different matter. She’d placed a lot of faith in the team investigating the Red Rose Killer in the past few months. The only thing that allowed her to sleep at night was the knowledge that some of the very best people she’d ever known were working around the clock to find Boyd and put him back behind bars where he belonged. But if Chase was innocent, then was her faith in the team misplaced? Or was she wrong to believe the man now standing in front of her?

Neither option was a comforting one.

“Did you ever have anything to do with Boyd Sullivan?” she pressed. Instinctively, her hand reached for his arm. She didn’t know why. But somehow she found her fingers brushing the fabric of his uniform, as if trying to hold him in place. “Anything at all? Anything that could explain why the police think you would be helping him or hiding him in your home?”

Chase shook his head. Then he looked down at her hand like it had been a really long time since he’d seen a woman’s fingers on his arm. His hand slid over hers, as if he was about to lead her into a party on his arm, or he was double-checking she was really there. The warmth of his touch spread through her skin. Then his clear and flawless eyes met hers again.

They were the same shade of green as a deep cool pond on a hot Texas summer day.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I give you my word. I would never put Allie in danger like that. She is my entire world.”

She believed that, right? That no matter what else she knew or didn’t know, Chase loved his little girl too much to sneak a man like Boyd Sullivan around the base and into their lives?

A chorus of panicked shouts erupted from the playground. Queenie barked and her students screamed. Maisy pushed through the door and pelted through the classroom and toward the back door, feeling Chase just one step behind her.

What was happening?

Then one child’s voice rose above them all—“No! Stop! You’re hurting me!”—and Maisy knew in an instant which student the voice belonged to.

It was Allie.

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