Standing Fast

by Maggie K. Black

  The idea of Allie growing up without him hurt so deeply he couldn’t breathe. Then Maisy’s face filled his mind. Why hadn’t he told her how he felt? Even if she’d rejected him, she still deserved to know that in his eyes she was extraordinary and that if he could, he’d spend every last day of this life letting her know how special she was.

  Then he heard a stubborn and determined howl and it filled his chest with hope. Queenie had found him.

  “This way? Is this where he is? Chase? Chase can you hear me?” Then he heard a voice that made his heart beat even faster. The one voice his poor feeble heart would know anywhere. It was Maisy and she was looking for him.

  “Maisy!” he shouted as loudly as he could, forcing his voice through the gag. His strong legs kicked hard against the trunk. “Maisy! I’m in here!”

  “Chase!” Her fists rapped against the trunk. “Hang on, Chase, I’m coming!” He heard her hands struggle with the latch. Queenie’s howls rose. “It’s locked. Hang on. I’m going to open it from the front seat.”

  She disappeared for the longest single moment he’d ever experienced in his life. Then he heard the sound of a window smashing. The latch clicked and the trunk opened. He sat up.

  He was in the trunk of a small car in a different part of the same warehouse. He guessed he’d surprised whoever had attacked him and they hadn’t had long to plan. The question was where they’d gone now and what they were going to do next.

  “I broke the front window,” Maisy said. Her face appeared around the corner, dim in the darkness and lit by her cell phone flashlight, and he knew without a doubt that she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life. “I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see you!”

  Her hands flew around his neck. Her fingers fumbled to loosen the gag. The fabric fell from his mouth. Her face hovered just inches from his. He leaned forward and kissed her, letting his lips brush against hers for just a moment before her hands slid down to his back and untied his hands.

  “Thank you,” he breathed.

  “No problem,” she said. “I wouldn’t be much of a preschool teacher if I didn’t know how to untie some pretty difficult knots.”

  He reached for her face. His fingers brushed her cheeks.

  “Thank you for coming to find me,” he said. “Thank you for believing in me and never giving up on me. I never dreamed I’d have someone as special as you in my life.”

  Her eyes flickered to his face. Then his lips met hers again, softly and sweetly. He kissed her for one long moment that seemed to contain a lifetime of longing. Then he pulled back, reached down, untied his feet and leaped from the trunk.

  “Good dog.” He reached down and brushed the top of Queenie’s head. Then he grabbed Maisy’s hand. “Come on, we need to find Captain Reardon and get out of here.”

  Through the maze of equipment and palettes he could see a dim light still shining in her office window. It was unimaginable that she hadn’t heard Queenie’s howls and realized something was wrong. Had she called the police? Had she hidden? Had his attacker gotten to her too?

  “Wait.” Her fingers tightened in his. “I have things I have to tell you quickly. First, Preston said charges are going to be brought against you tonight. They claim to have pictures of you, Boyd Sullivan, Drew Golosky and Allie together at a gas station.”

  “They’re fake,” he said. “That never happened. I wouldn’t do that.”

  He started to pull his hand from her grasp, but she held on to him tightly.

  “I know, Chase,” she said. “I believe you. I know the man you are inside. There’s more. I got Allie to tell me who the ‘bad man’ and the ‘hurt man’ are. The ‘hurt man’ is your alibi, Ajay. The ‘bad man’ is someone who killed him while he was on video chat with your daughter.”

  His heart stopped. Ajay was dead and his own little girl had witnessed his murder? But who had killed him? And why?

  “Down on the ground, both of you, or I’ll shoot you.”

  A hooded figure in a baseball cap and bandanna stepped out of the darkness, and Chase heard for the first time the voice of the person who’d been terrorizing him and realized just who the figure behind the mask was.

  FOURTEEN

  “Captain Reardon,” he called. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  Chase dropped to the ground, holding one hand above his head and keeping the other clasped tight in Maisy’s hand. Now that he found her, he never wanted to let her go.

  “You were behind this the whole time, weren’t you?” he said. “Don’t deny it. I know your voice. What’s your game here? Are you working with the person who was stealing the weapons? Did you have something to do with Ajay getting murdered? Are you working with Boyd Sullivan?”

  “I have nothing to do with Boyd Sullivan!” The captain tossed her head, letting the hood fall back as she pulled the bandanna from her lips. “He was a convenient way to discredit you. People on this base are all too eager to find someone to fear and hate. This is about a small scale black market weapons business that was going just peachy until Ajay Joseph decided to look too hard at the shipping manifests, and Teddy Dennis was stupid enough to kill him when he tried to video call you about it, not realizing your little brat had witnessed it.”

  He felt Maisy squeeze his hand. He squeezed hers back tightly.

  “So you and Captain Dennis concocted a brilliant plan to steal and sell hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of weapons from the United States Air Force and kill a good man to make that happen, and my toddler managed to ruin your plan.”

  Oh, his beautiful little girl was so smart and so brave. She’d been trying to tell him all along. But it took Maisy’s kind and patient love to bring it out of her.

  “What’s your plan here, Captain Reardon?” he asked. “You tried to take my daughter, so she couldn’t tell anyone what happened. You tried to take my dog, because you knew she’d tracked something. You tried to kill Maisy for protecting my daughter from you. Why take me? To kill me in some way that framed me and ended this?”

  “I didn’t work this hard, for this long, to skim just the right amount not to get caught, find buyers, move weapons and coordinate all that, only to have your kid, your little dog and a preschool teacher ruin it for me,” Captain Reardon snarled.

  A wry smile turned on Chase’s lips. His kid, his little dog and a preschool teacher. He couldn’t think of a team he’d rather be a part of. He eased his fingers from Maisy’s, stood up slowly and took a step forward, putting himself between Captain Reardon’s gun and Maisy. As far as he knew, his former captain hadn’t actually murdered anyone yet. Each time she’d attacked, she’d hesitated or run. He hoped that meant he could keep her from pulling the trigger now.

  “Stop! Right now, Chase! Another step and I’ll shoot her through the head!”

  Well, that settled it. He threw himself at Captain Reardon, catching her by the wrist, clamping his hands over hers before the gun could fire. She fell backward as he broke her grasp on the gun. Then he stood over her, aiming the weapon at her head.

  “Get down! Stay down!” Chase shouted. “This ends here!”

  “Yeah it does, Chase!” a man’s voice echoed. “But not for her!”

  Light filled his eyes. He blinked as a man in a Security Forces uniform strode toward him. It was Preston.

  “Get down! On the ground! Drop your weapon!” Preston barked. “This time, I’ve got you dead to rights! You’re going to prison for the rest of your life.”

  Chase tossed the gun so hard it ricocheted somewhere deep inside the warehouse and knelt. He knew how this looked. Preston had been itching for a reason to throw him in jail for days, and now he had him red-handed, with a weapon pointed at a superior officer and no proof of a reason why.

  “Preston, wait!” Maisy darted in front of him, stepping between Preston and Chase. “You’ve got it all wrong, Pres
ton. Listen to me, please. Captain Reardon framed Chase because one of Chase’s old colleagues figured out that she and Captain Dennis were working together to steal from weapon shipments. Her accomplice in Afghanistan killed Chase’s alibi, Ajay Joseph. Chase’s daughter, Allie, witnessed the murder.”

  But still, one important question remained unanswered. What had Queenie smelled? How had Captain Reardon possibly gotten her hands on the gold cross and planted it?

  “Whatever he says, Lieutenant, don’t believe him,” Captain Reardon said. She got to her feet. Her eyes scanned in vain for her gun. “Neither of them can prove a word of any of that.”

  “No,” Chase said. “We can’t. But I think I know who can.” He turned to his little dog, standing obediently for her partner’s word, even as he was in danger. “Queenie, search.”

  She disappeared with a howl, charging through the warehouse with her nose on the scent. Then she barked triumphantly and stood up on her hind legs, with her paws braced against Captain Reardon’s office door.

  Chase leaped to run after her, but Preston’s gun kept him in place.

  “She’s found something,” Chase said. “Let me go see what it is.”

  “You stay there,” Preston said. “I don’t care what she’s found. If you move, I’ll shoot you.”

  Captain Reardon smirked. Panic beat through Chase’s chest. If there was something hiding in Captain Reardon’s office and Preston didn’t let him search for it, she could destroy it or remove it before anyone could ever find it.

  “But you wouldn’t shoot me, would you, Preston?” Maisy asked.

  Chase wasn’t so sure. Was Preston’s jealousy so twisted he’d kill Maisy for rejecting him? But Chase could only watch as Maisy broke into a sprint, running through the darkened parking lot toward the small dog.

  “Stay out of my office!” Captain Reardon shouted. She ran at Maisy. But it was too late. Maisy yanked the office door open. Queenie darted through, with Maisy on her heels. She slammed the door shut behind her and turned the lock. Captain Reardon pounded her fists on her office door. She glanced at Preston. “Shoot the lock off!”

  Preston hesitated. The office blind flew up.

  “Chase!” Maisy shouted. Her face appeared at the office window. The glass was so flimsy she barely had to raise her voice to be heard. There was no way it was bulletproof. “Queenie’s pawing the carpet!”

  “Yank the carpet up and look underneath!” Chase shouted, ignoring the gun barrel aimed at his temple. If Preston flinched, even so much as an inch to turn the gun away from Chase’s face and toward Maisy and the office, Chase would be able to use the distraction to catch him by the wrist and force him to the floor.

  Maisy disappeared from view.

  “There’s a floor grate under the carpet!” she shouted. “Hang on.”

  Her voice disappeared. Captain Reardon’s hand paused on the door as a clammy paleness spread over her face.

  Then a happy laugh filled the air.

  “Chase!” Maisy’s face appeared at the window, holding a blue-cased laptop. “Queenie’s found a computer!”

  “That’s mine, isn’t it?” Chase asked his former boss. But even if he hadn’t recognized the laptop cover, the panicked look on Captain Reardon’s ashen face would’ve confirmed his suspicion. He glanced at Preston, meeting his eyes over the barrel of the gun. “That’s the laptop I told you was stolen from my truck. It’ll have proof of my conversations with Ajay, the encrypted files he sent of the weapons transfers, his murder, all of it. Even if Captain Reardon was smart enough to try to wipe it, the machine has a secret backup drive.”

  Maisy disappeared from the window. Preston hesitated. Fear, anger and frustration filled his eyes. Then Chase realized that Captain Reardon had stopped trying to break into her office. Instead, she stood by the office door with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, as frozen as a computer trying to process new information. He knew that look. She was calculating.

  A moment later, Maisy was back at the window. “I tried to call Justin, but the office phone’s dead. I can’t get a signal on my cell phone, either.”

  Help us, Lord. You’re our only hope.

  “The laptop doesn’t matter,” Preston said. “We still have the gold cross. Nothing on that machine will clear you of the fact that Maisy’s father’s cross was found in your home.”

  “Because you planted it there, didn’t you, Preston?” Maisy shouted. “Don’t lie to me. I spend all day settling squabbles between little children. You think I can’t tell when someone’s guilty of something? You told me yourself, you wanted to solve the crime. So what happened? You found my father’s cross at a crime scene and decided that rather than processing it properly you’d hold on to it?”

  “Because I wanted to give it back to you myself!” Preston roared.

  “Because you wanted to be a hero!” Maisy’s voice rose. “When Captain Reardon decided to try to frame Chase as Boyd’s accomplice, and Security Forces searched Chase’s home, you saw your opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Captain Reardon stumbled into a desperate crime to protect herself. Little did she know she was only getting away with it because you were too focused on proving that Chase was guilty to actually do your job!”

  “Because I knew he was guilty!” Preston snapped. “And if I had to plant evidence to make sure he got what was coming to him and he went to prison, it was worth it.”

  “Enough of this!” Captain Reardon shouted. Whatever she’d been debating in her mind had apparently been decided. “Shoot out the office window. We can make it look like an accident and because it’s a big target, it’ll look less suspicious than if we break down my office door. I’ll go in and drag her out. You take him and we’ll kill them both. I’ll have your back. Nobody needs to know about any of this. I’ll cut you in and I’ll make it worth your while. Your problems will go away and so will mine.”

  Fear filled Chase’s veins as he watched Preston hesitate, and Chase could see without a doubt that he was considering it. Maybe he’d been right that Captain Reardon wasn’t prepared to commit murder. But the fact that her accomplice, Captain Dennis, had killed Ajay meant that clearly she wasn’t above getting somebody else to do her dirty work.

  “Let Maisy go!” Chase stepped forward, his hands raised. “Do whatever you want to me, but don’t hurt Maisy. Let her go and be there for my daughter.”

  “Chase, no!” His name flew from Maisy’s lips like a cry.

  But he raised a hand and signaled her to hold back and trust him.

  “You have to kill them both,” Captain Reardon said. “It’s the only way. We can leave them in the ravine, with a rose and everything, and make it look like Boyd Sullivan killed them.”

  “Preston,” Chase said firmly. “She’s guilty of treason and an accomplice to murder. The only thing you’re guilty of is planting evidence.”

  Preston raised his weapon, steadied it with his second hand, and Chase knew without a doubt in his mind that Preston wouldn’t miss the shot.

  “Think about it, Preston!” Captain Reardon’s voice rose. “You’re going to walk out of here one of two ways. Either you’re going to be seen as a corrupt cop who planted evidence to frame someone. Or everyone will celebrate you as the man who brought down the Red Rose Killer’s accomplice! Maisy is Clint Lockwood’s daughter. Boyd Sullivan is probably going to kill her eventually, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Maisy, but she’s right,” Preston said. “You should’ve let me save you.”

  “Maisy!” Chase shouted. “Get back!”

  Queenie howled. Chase leaped. The weapon fired. The bullet flew. The office window shattered in a spray of glass fragments. Chase threw Preston to the ground, yanking the weapon from his grasp. Preston reared back. His fists flew toward Chase’s face. But it was too late. Chase caught him by the arm and flipped him, pressing him face down into the pavement.
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  “Maisy!” he shouted. His eyes darted toward the empty and gaping hole where the windowpane had been. Please, Lord, let her be okay. Preston squirmed beneath him, fighting his hold. Captain Reardon ran for the office window, braced her hand on the window frame and prepared to leap through, destroy the laptop and Maisy. “No!”

  Maisy jumped up, her face flushed, her eyes determined and an office chair clutched in her hands. She swung at the captain. His former boss shouted in pain and crumpled to the floor. Emotions surged through his chest in a wave that seemed to crash over him. Relief. Thankfulness. Admiration.

  Love.

  Footsteps sounded in the distance, then shouting and the sound of dogs barking.

  He looked up as a group of well-armed Security Forces swarmed around them, with Captain Justin Blackwood at the lead.

  “Justin!” Maisy unlocked the office door, pushed through and ran toward him, clutching the laptop to her chest, with Queenie at her heels. “Stop! Chase is innocent. Preston planted the gold cross. Captain Reardon called in the fake Boyd Sullivan sighting to cover up a murder overseas. This laptop has the proof of Chase’s alibi and how he was murdered.”

  “I heard,” Justin said. His mouth set in a grim line. “We had Preston under surveillance.”

  What? Chase loosened his grip on Preston, but not enough that the man could actually stand.

  “You can let him up,” Justin said. “We’ll take it from here. We had reason to suspect for some time that he’d tampered with some evidence in order to boost his own ego.”

  Did that mean Chase had been used as bait, in some trap, to allow them to catch Preston? That when Justin had seen how relentlessly Preston had gone after him, he’d stepped back and let Chase withstand his attacks, in order to reach the truth?

  Yet, he knew, as he looked at Justin’s face, that he’d never get an answer to that question.

  Two officers flanked Captain Reardon, even as she groaned and stumbled to her feet.