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.
