LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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