Buch lesen: «Standing Fast»

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.