Standing Fast

by Maggie K. Black

  That’s when she noticed Felicity standing halfway down the sidewalk with little Freddy in her arms, and realized she must be holding him so that Zoe could talk to her privately.

  Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Ava Esposito.

  Are you all right? Praying for you! I’m here if you want to grab coffee or need anything. Hugs!

  Fear crept up her spine. What had happened? Another kidnapping? Another Boyd Sullivan sighting? Another creepy rose left by the Red Rose Killer with a threat for someone at Sunny Seeds?

  Please, Lord, not another death.

  Instinctively, Maisy reached for Zoe’s arm. “What happened?”

  Sadness washed over her friend’s features. “I’m guessing you don’t read the Canyon Air Force Base anonymous blogger’s website?”

  “No, of course not!” Maisy’s nose wrinkled instinctively. “Why would I read that trash?”

  This was all about gossip? What could the blogger have possibly written that would cause this many people to show up at Sunny Seeds? Heidi looked ready to come her way, but Felicity raised a swift hand and Heidi held back.

  Zoe held up her phone. “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “Just let me see it.” She took the phone, glanced down at the screen and felt her heart stop like someone had squeezed it.

  It was her. A picture of her sitting on the log in Zoe’s backyard, holding Chase’s hands.

  In the photo, she looked so deeply into Chase’s eyes. She looked totally crush-struck. Besotted. She looked like a woman in—No, she wouldn’t let herself think that word, the L word, not about Chase. Not now. Not ever. Standing there, on the sidewalk, she felt like someone had ripped the door off her heart and left it hanging wide-open for all to see. She pressed her hands, still cool from the car’s air-conditioning, against her flaming cheeks. Could everyone tell how she felt about Chase? Could he?

  “I’m so sorry,” Zoe said. “The blogger has targeted me too and I know what it’s like to have the truth of your life twisted up with a whole lot of gossip and innuendo and then used against you.”

  Her friend’s voice was soft, and yet a strength, like battle-tested steel, ran through it, and Maisy suddenly realized why Zoe had been the one of her friends delegated to give her the bad news.

  Maisy blinked hard and forced herself to focus on the words written on the screen. The headline was everything she feared it would be, implying in huge bold letters that Chase was Boyd Sullivan’s accomplice, and that she was disgracing her father’s memory by having an inappropriate and ill-advised romance with the man accused of helping to kill him.

  She gritted her teeth and continued reading down the page. The first few paragraphs outlined the case against Chase, including the fact that his name had appeared on a prison visitor log, that Security Forces had raided his home after someone had called in an anonymous report of seeing Boyd Sullivan there and that her father’s gold cross had been found after the house was searched. Maisy shook her head. How did the blogger know all that?

  Then the blogger had written about the incident of Allie’s attempted kidnapping at the school the day before. However, the post twisted the facts around to make it sound like Maisy’s class was so badly run that either Allie was a little brat who’d wandered away all on her own, or that Maisy had helped Chase stage the kidnapping in an attempt to paint himself as an innocent victim.

  At best, it made Maisy look like a fool who’d been duped by a potential killer. At worse, she was another one of Boyd’s accomplices.

  The blog trailed on, but she couldn’t read another word. Angry tears filled her eyes, briefly blocking out the sea of people surrounding the front of her school.

  “It’s not fair,” Maisy said. “Whoever wrote this is just twisting details, making wild guesses and asking questions, leaving the reader to fill in the answers.”

  “It’s what trolls like that do,” Zoe said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How did they even know this stuff?” she asked, pushing the phone back into her friend’s hand. “Surely, some of these details should be confidential!”

  Zoe shook her head, sadness mingled with bewilderment in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Zoe admitted. “If you read down to the end of the page, the blogger claims to have a source who anonymously sent the pictures of you and Chase.”

  She wasn’t sure who the anonymous source could possibly be. But whether or not that was true, now the whole world had someone to accuse of being Boyd Sullivan’s accomplice. Was the anonymous source the same person who’d cut the screen of Allie’s bedroom window and tried to kidnap her?

  “So that’s why Heidi Jenks is at the school,” she said. She’d talked to the reporter briefly after her father had died. Heidi had written a very kind obituary. Maisy knew other people found the tenacious reporter a bit much and some even wondered if Heidi herself was the anonymous blogger. But Maisy had always viewed her as polite, considerate and respectful.

  “Heidi and Felicity are neighbors,” Zoe said, her lip curled only very slightly to indicate that she and Felicity might not have agreed on the reporter. “Felicity thinks it might be good if you talked to a sympathetic source.”

  “About what?” Maisy asked. “The fact that someone printed this trash about me? How could this possibly be news?”

  “There’s an open letter going around among the parents,” Zoe said. “It’s addressed to Imogene Wilson and the base commander. The parents of almost all the students have signed it.”

  Fear brushed Maisy’s spine. “What kind of letter?”

  “I didn’t sign it,” Zoe said quickly. “You have to know I love you, Freddy loves you and your friends have your back. In fact, some of us are here today as a show of support.”

  A Security Forces car pulled up behind her with a screech of tires and it took her a second to register Preston’s uniformed presence behind the wheel.

  “They’re demanding armed uniformed Security Forces protection at the front doors,” Zoe continued. Maisy nodded. Okay, that wasn’t the first time she’d heard that and while she didn’t like the idea, she wouldn’t be surprised if Imogene caved and agreed to it.

  “Okay, and?”

  “They want all field trips cancelled, the back playground and yard closed off and children kept inside all day.”

  What? Something bristled at the center of her core. Keep the children locked inside all day? Why punish them like that? The thought of their sad little faces pressed up against the window looking out at the glorious Texas sunshine was cruel.

  Preston was out of his car and striding toward her now, with a look of determination and purpose she didn’t much like. He looked like a rhino preparing to break down a wall.

  “Is that it?” Maisy asked.

  “They want Allie McLear expelled and Chase forbidden from coming anywhere near the school.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Not if they think Chase is Boyd Sullivan’s accomplice and that he set up a fake kidnap attempt yesterday,” Zoe said. “They say it’s not fair for the school’s resources to be diverted to make sure one little girl isn’t being used as a pawn, when there are other students to worry about.”

  Zoe’s shoulders rose and fell, and Maisy was reminded that some people had argued she shouldn’t have allowed little Freddy in her school either because he was Boyd’s nephew. What was wrong with these people? How had fear and paranoia managed to infect the base so deeply? It was like a disease, destroying good will, killing faith and rotting out everything she valued about being part of a base community.

  Lord, please, release us from this fear and stop this nightmare before it tears us apart. Help me continue to be a beacon and source of hope, light and comfort to these tiny children, who I know You care for too. Help me continue to do my part to chip away at the darkness.

  Zoe took a deep breath. “S
orry, honey, but they’re also demanding that you be fired from Sunny Seeds.”

  NINE

  Fired? The word clattered inside Maisy’s chest so painfully that for a moment all she could do was stand there, looking in her friend’s sad eyes and feeling herself gasp for breath like a fish suddenly yanked from the deep, cool comforts of her pond. Imogene would never fire her. Would she? She was excellent at her job and hadn’t taken so much as a day off in years, even after her father had been killed. Surely, the worst-case scenario was that her boss would put her on leave, while they started a long procedure to investigate the complaints against her. Yet, the fact that anyone wanted her to be fired hurt so deeply that it was almost impossible for her to take any comfort in that. This school was her life. Her students were her entire world. Why would anyone try to take that away from her? How could anybody think that her students would be better off without her?

  “They can’t do this,” she said. Her feet feebly and haltingly steered her up toward the front steps and toward the gathering of friends, parents, concerned Canyon residents and those onlookers making somebody else’s problem their own. “They can’t say I don’t care about my students because some scandalous blog decided to write rumors and lies about me, or published a picture of me being seen to...”

  Words failed her. Being seen to do what? Hold hands with a criminal suspect. Gaze up into his eyes. Look up at him like he was everything she’d ever wanted and nothing she thought she’d ever be able to have.

  “Maisy, we need to talk.” Preston barreled to her side. His hand brushed the back of her shoulder and his stiff form fell into step alongside her, as if he’d taken it upon himself to be her personal escort. “Somewhere private.”

  Nothing in his tone or body language implied it was official. Whatever Preston Flannigan wanted to talk about was way down her list of priorities, and going somewhere private with him was not about to happen.

  She shrugged his hand away and kept walking straight ahead without looking at him. “I’m sorry, it’ll have to wait. I don’t have time right now.”

  “But you don’t know what it’s about.” He reached for her arm, not exactly touching her, but somehow still uncomfortably close.

  “If it’s about the Red Rose Killer investigation, please get Captain Blackwood to call me,” she said. “I already had a long conversation this morning with FBI Special Agent Oliver Davison.”

  “It’s not police business—”

  “Then, please, it has to wait.” She raised her head high and walked through the crowd, feeling Zoe close on the other side and seeing Felicity and Heidi ahead. She could hear Preston still talking behind her. Not in coherent sentences though, but blustering and sputtering out syllables like “but,” “you” and “I.” She didn’t turn.

  Eyes averted their gaze as she passed. So this was what it was like to have the Canyon Air Force Base’s finger of suspicion pointed at you. Suddenly her heart ached for what Zoe had been going through ever since her half brother Boyd had broken out of prison.

  And Chase...

  She stopped in front of Felicity and Heidi. Zoe reached for Freddy, and Felicity slid the little boy into his mother’s arms.

  Maisy nodded to Heidi and was relieved to find she still had enough composure to give the journalist a polite smile. “Hi, Heidi. I don’t have a statement to make about anything at this time. Okay?”

  Despite her reputation for being a ruthless and relentless reporter, Heidi gave her a sympathetic look from behind her large dark-framed glasses. She nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you. Are you planning on running a story about me?”

  “Not specifically.” Heidi’s eyes met hers straight on and Maisy found herself thankful for her directness and honesty. “I’m researching a story about Airman Chase McLear. The fact that his daughter was kidnapped from this school will be part of it. But the story has not taken shape yet, so I’ll call you for comment before I go to press. In the meantime, feel free to call me anytime if you want to talk, either on or off the record.”

  She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a business card, and even though Maisy was pretty sure she already had the reporter’s number in her phone, she took it and slid it into her pocket. “Thank you.”

  Heidi disappeared back into the crowd. As Maisy watched her walk away, she noticed Preston talking to Yvette. Whatever he was saying had the very pretty base nutritionist giggling. Looked like the lieutenant had found someone more receptive to his charm.

  “Do you want us go into the school with you?” Felicity asked. “I can stick around for a while.”

  Maisy rolled her shoulders back. Her father’s words echoed through her mind. Strong people fought their own battles. “No, I’m good.”

  They paused a moment, then nodded. Zoe shifted Freddy around in her arms.

  “Okay, I’m taking Freddy to class,” Zoe said. “If you need us, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Thank you,” Maisy said, resisting for the moment the urge to just throw her arms around both friends and hug them. Instead, she stepped back and looked around the chaos on the lawn. Brouhaha or no brouhaha, she was still these children’s teacher.

  “Esther,” she called, raising her tone with her “Miss Maisy voice,” as her students called it. “We need to get people sorted through and dropping their kids off. A lot of these people need to get to work. Can you please herd all those dropping their kids into a straight line by the front door? After that, start processing them through into the classroom. As always, parents are welcome to stay with their children if they wish.”

  Esther nodded and Maisy couldn’t help but notice how her usually confident assistant’s fingers shook and her dark eyes darted from Maisy’s face to the ground and back. Then the younger woman hurried to her side.

  “Imogene wants to see you in her office right away,” Esther said, confirming what Maisy already suspected. Then her voice dropped. “I didn’t tell my grandfather anything bad about what happened yesterday. I promise I didn’t, Maisy. But I live with him, while I’m saving up for a house, and he said he was getting flooded with calls and emails this morning from people on base, and around the country, demanding to know why he was letting a ‘known threat’ near children at the preschool. Even some major civilian news outlets called him, asking for comments about Chase McLear and saying they were sending reporters. He’ll be talking to the press later and wanted to talk to you first. Some people are even saying you’ve been helping Chase by covering up for the fact that he’s working with Boyd Sullivan. He can’t ignore that.”

  The national press was showing up at the base to ask if one of Canyon’s preschool teachers was, at best, accidentally aiding the Red Rose Killer’s accomplice or, at worse, if she herself was a coconspirator to his crimes? No, she guessed the base commander couldn’t just let that go.

  “I’m going in the side door,” Maisy said. “That will keep the front entrance clear for you to lead the kids into the classroom.”

  As well, it would give her a few moments alone, in peace and quiet, to pray and ask the Lord for help before stepping inside. Esther nodded. Maisy slipped past the crowd and around the side of the building. She turned the corner, walked a few steps, then stopped and pressed one hand against the wall.

  What do I do, Lord? Yes, I know I can dig my heels in. But is that what’s best for my students? How do I protect them?

  A large hand landed on her shoulder, cutting her prayer short. She spun back, her pulse racing and her arm raised in self-defense as she came within a half-inch of accidentally elbowing Preston across the face. She jumped back. He’d followed her.

  “Maisy!” He leaned in. His voice was hushed and urgent. “Before you talk to the base commander we need to talk.”

  She pressed her lips together as the line she often said to the children crossed her mind—wanting something wasn’t the same
as needing it.

  “So you’ve told me.” She crossed her arms. “About something personal, that’s not official police business. And I’ve told you it has to wait. So, if you’re here as a parent, then either you can accompany your son into the classroom or you can wait for me out front.”

  “I’m here as a friend,” he said quickly. “I’m here because I care about you.”

  She shook her head. But they weren’t friends and Preston couldn’t just single-handedly decide they had a personal relationship. He might be drawn to her, in a slightly overbearing way that, truthfully, had always made her feel mildly uncomfortable. In fact, sometimes the teacher’s gifts his son gave her at holidays were more generous and personal than she was comfortable with. Had she done something to let him think she was open to a deeper relationship with him? Did she need to be bolder at putting him in his place?

  But he was a member of the Security Forces, the father of one of her students and someone investigating her father’s murder.

  “Now is not a good time. I will talk to you later, Preston.”