Christmas K-9 Protectors, page 1
Meet the officers of the Alaska K-9 Unit series and their brave K-9 partners
Officer: Criminal psychologist Mallory Haru
K-9 Partner: Koko the Malinois
Assignment: Rehabilitate Koko while working with tech guru Eli Partridge to stay ahead of killers
Officer: Ian McCaffrey
K-9 Partner: Aurora the German shepherd
Assignment: Help forensic scientist Tala Elko track down a murderous ring of thieves
Maggie K. Black is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.
With over seventy books published and millions in print, Lenora Worth writes award-winning romance and romantic suspense. Three of her books finaled in the ACFW Carol Awards, and her Love Inspired Suspense novel Body of Evidence became a New York Times bestseller. Her novella in Mistletoe Kisses made her a USA TODAY bestselling author. Lenora goes on adventures with her retired husband, Don, and enjoys reading, baking and shopping...especially shoe shopping.
Christmas K-9 Protectors
Maggie K. Black
Lenora Worth
Table of Contents
Holiday Heist by Maggie K. Black
Alaskan Christmas Chase by Lenora Worth
Excerpt from Amish Christmas Escape by Dana R. Lynn
Holiday Heist
Maggie K. Black
To Dianne and all of you spending Christmas alone. Thank you for picking up this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it for you.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
—John 16:33
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Dear Reader
ONE
As forensic scientist Tala Ekho reached for her gingerbread latte at the busy Anchorage mall coffee kiosk, she had the unsettling suspicion that the person standing at the counter beside her was trying to get away with a crime. Even though it had been over an hour since she had clocked out of work, traded in her white lab coat for a festive Christmas sweater and even braided a red ribbon through her long black hair, her keen mind continued to analyze the data around her as if it was still inspecting clues at the Alaska State Crime Lab.
Tala’s nose detected the pungent smell of isopropyl alcohol wafting off the slender woman’s form, despite her obvious attempt to drown it out with a rather flowery perfume. Her long and puffy green coat was zipped all the way up and an oversize, furry hood hid her face. This was despite the fact that the mall had decided to turn up both the heat and Christmas carols to full blast. Slight burn marks on the woman’s fingers implied she’d recently tried to use a cigarette lighter to melt something, while bright splashes of yellow and red dye trapped in the creases of her fingernails meant it had likely been an ink-filled clothing security tag.
She felt the clues come together to create a complete picture. Analysis: the woman had tried to melt a security tag, it had exploded and so she’d doused herself with a heavy-duty cleaning alcohol to remove the evidence. There was no way someone would just bring a pungent cleanser like that to a mall in their purse without a very good reason.
Conclusion: she was a thief who’d come to the mall prepared to shoplift.
Just this morning, Tala had been briefing the Alaska K-9 Unit via video chat on evidence found at the recent armed robberies of two jewelry stores and a pawnshop. One of the elderly men working at the pawnshop the night of the robbery had disappeared, too, and still hadn’t been found. Although the brazen perpetrator of the robberies had been identified by witnesses as a man—dubbed the Golden Bandit by local press—and armed robberies were a very different type of theft, one of the troopers had mentioned in passing that the Anchorage police were also on the lookout for a very pernicious shoplifter. The team had debated the possibility that the shoplifter and Golden Bandit were linked somehow but discarded it as unlikely.
Was the woman beside her the shoplifter her colleagues had been talking about? If so, what should Tala do about it?
The suspect moved away from the counter and over to the wall. Tala hesitated awkwardly, then sat at the closest empty table and dropped her purse on top, where it toppled over, spilling out a stack of green flyers for a donation drive at the hospice where her grandmother had died. She shoveled the flyers back in. For all the years Tala had spent in the lab poring over case evidence sent to her by the Alaska K-9 Unit, she’d never actually done any fieldwork—let alone tried to stop a criminal. She knew the law well enough to know she could hardly call security just because someone looked and smelled funny, and if she called her colleagues, the woman might be long gone by the time they arrived.
Help me, Lord. I need Your wisdom.
Tala pushed her silver-rimmed glasses up higher on her nose with one finger in the same motion she’d used countless times when examining evidence at the crime lab. The suspect appeared to be texting someone now, and there wasn’t a security guard in sight.
Then a flash of periwinkle blue caught Tala’s eye, and her heart leaped. There was a uniformed state trooper in the jewelry store talking to someone behind the engagement ring counter. She’d have assumed it was about the Golden Bandit case if he also hadn’t been holding up a rather large ring. Well, it looked like someone was planning on proposing this Christmas. Judging by the young, long-haired and exceedingly fluffy German shepherd at his feet, the man was a rookie and not someone she’d worked with before. That said, she usually only saw the team through phone calls and video chats. She stood up to get a better look and saw he was tall, with a strong set of shoulders and a shock of short red hair. The trooper turned as if sensing her gaze and it was like the busy world around her froze.
It was Ian McCaffrey.
He’d aged over fifteen years and grown a tidy beard since she’d last seen his face at the disastrous high school party that had finally ended their friendship once and for all. That night they’d been arguing about the fact that she thought his hockey friends were bullies, then somehow she’d ended up blurting out that she liked him and they’d almost kissed before he turned tail and ran. They hadn’t spoken since. But it was most definitely him—the guy who’d been her best friend from kindergarten and whom she used to think she’d one day marry.
Wow. Ian was a K-9 trooper now? His eyebrows rose as he scanned her face. But there was no time to begin to analyze this unexpected complication, because the suspected shoplifter was on the move again. The woman wove through the tables with her, unzipped her coat with one hand and then tripped, sending her phone clattering to the floor behind a crowded table of teenage boys in high school hockey jerseys. Tala noted the boys had name-brand electronics bags crowded around their feet. The woman bent down, scooped up her phone with one hand and slid something Tala couldn’t quite make out into her open coat with the other. Then she straightened up and kept moving toward the exit, doing up her zipper as she went.
The shoplifter had just stolen something from one of the boys! Tala was convinced of it.
Lord...what do I do? I’m not a cop, but I have to do something. She’s getting away!
If Tala was wrong, she was about to make a gigantic fool out of herself. But if she was right and didn’t intervene, she’d never forgive herself. She leaped to her feet.
“Hey! Ma’am!” Tala yelled. “I think you just took something that isn’t yours!”
The woman didn’t stop moving, but her shoulders twitched as if she’d heard her. Tala glanced toward Ian, pointed at the shoplifter and hollered, “That woman just stole something!”
Ian’s brows furrowed. Tala didn’t wait for him to act. She scooped up her purse and jogged after her, feeling her boots slide on the wet floor.
“Excuse me!” She reached out and touched the woman’s sleeve. “Ma’am! I saw you rob those boys!”
The suspect spun and yanked her arm back so suddenly Tala lost her footing and wiped out on the floor. Snorts of laughter rose from the table of teenage boys.
The woman’s hood fell back, showing the immaculate makeup and pale blond pixie cut of an attractive woman probably in her late thirties. She was impeccably dressed and wearing a voluminous scarf worth at least what Tala earned as a month’s salary.
“Hey, you! Officer!” the woman shouted and Tala turned to see both Ian and his K-9 partner running toward them. Heat rose to Tala’s face. “This lady attacked me! Arrest her! Now!”
* * *
Of the dozens of things that Ian McCaffrey had never forgotten about his beautiful and brilliant former best friend was that Tala absolutely hated being the center of attention. So, as he watched her spring to her feet, defiance flashing in her dark eyes, he found himself silently praying that she wouldn’t notice the crowd of people gawking at her now.
Then he added a second prayer for wisd om.
Give me strength, Lord. I barely feel prepared to face Tala again in the best of circumstances, let alone like this.
His late grandmother had always joked that the red-haired McCaffrey men were all heart and no brains. There was enough of a kernel of truth in it that he’d secretly debated whether he’d really be cut out for a job in law enforcement. Right now, his heart was pounding a mile a minute and his mind didn’t know what to think.
He crossed the floor toward the two women, oddly thankful for the reassuring bulk of his K-9 partner, Aurora, by his side.
“Ian McCaffrey, Alaska State Trooper.” His voice rose as he raised his badge aloft before sliding it back in his jacket. “What seems to be the problem?”
“She’s a thief.” Tala spoke first. “I’m sure of it. She smells like isopropyl alcohol, and she has burn marks on her fingertips and ink splatter on her cuticles.”
She said the words with such confidence it was like Tala expected him to know what all that meant. A ferocity filled her gaze, radiating a confidence that somehow made her even more attractive than she had been when her mere smile had knocked his socks off back in high school.
Ever since he’d joined the Alaska K-9 Unit, he’d heard person after person tell him about the incredible forensic scientist who’d been an invaluable part of so many investigations. While he’d been steeling himself to face her again, he’d never imagined it would be in a moment like this.
“She just crouched down behind that table,” Tala added, pointing with an outstretched arm to a group of teenagers who were both watching and recording the unfolding scene like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. “I think she stole something from one of those guys.”
Ian fought the urge to roll his eyes as the hockey-jersey-clad teens patted themselves theatrically as if Tala’s claim was all some big joke instead of actually looking through their bags to see if she was right. It was bravado, he guessed, the kind that made adolescent boys all join in on doing something dumb together instead of being smart and doing what was in their own best interest. He’d been the goalie of the same team in high school and some of his fellow teammates had practically competed to see who could act like the bigger idiot.
The well-dressed woman snorted.
“Is it true? Miss...” Ian dragged out the last word, hoping she’d supply him with her name.
“Claudia Mailer,” she said. “And no, of course it’s not. It’s ludicrous and she’s a menace.” She fired off two rapid texts to someone Ian noticed was listed in her phone as “Boyfriend.” Then she turned to Tala. “There’s something seriously wrong with your brain, lady. You had no right to harass me like this. My boyfriend’s got the money to hire a good lawyer. You should be glad I don’t have time to stick around and press charges.”
“Trust me, Ian,” Tala countered. “She tried to melt a security tag, it exploded and she cleaned the ink off her hands with the alcohol. You can smell it. You can see it.” Her dark and earnest eyes fixed on his face, through her glasses with round-wired frames. “And if she took off her jacket right now, I’m sure you’d see the ink splattered all over her.”
His heart told him to believe her, but he also knew better than to trust it even as Claudia shoved her hands deep into her pockets.
“Did you actually see her steal something?” Ian asked.
“No,” Tala admitted. “But all the data indicates it.”
A ripple of whispers went through the watching crowd. Almost everyone had their cell phones out, either typing on them or—even worse—filming the altercation. The situation was deteriorating rapidly and it definitely sounded like the crowd was not on Tala’s side. Ian heard a voice shout his name and looked over to see the jewelry store saleswoman he’d been talking to, jogging down the hall with a middle-aged security guard.
I could really use some help here.
Ian looked at Aurora. The long-haired German shepherd sat beside Tala and Aurora’s shaggy face looked up into hers. Hmm. Apparently his K-9 partner had already chosen sides.
“Please, Ian,” Tala said. “Remember how my brain gets? It’s always analyzing every little thing. I can’t shut it off. But it’s almost always right.”
He wrenched his eyes away from her and breathed a silent prayer. Then he remembered he already had all the information he actually needed. It didn’t make any difference what had happened when they were teenagers. Tala was his colleague now and she was very well respected by his new team. That was all that mattered.
Ian pulled his badge to show the approaching security guard.
“Trooper Ian McCaffrey,” he said. “K-9 unit. This is Tala Ekho of the Alaska State Crime Lab. She has reason to believe this woman has been shoplifting. I realize this whole thing is a bit unusual, but Miss Ekho is an extremely skilled forensic scientist. Her expertise is valued by the Alaska K-9 Unit, and if she believes this woman here has been stealing, that’s reason enough to detain her for questioning.”
He blew out a hard breath, feeling like he’d oddly dodged a bullet. It wasn’t personal; it was professional. No matter what weird twisting and turning his gut might be doing.
Claudia’s eyes widened, and she sputtered a string of curses under her breath, as if she was completely and utterly shocked that Ian hadn’t taken her side. Then she turned on her heel and strode quickly toward the exit. In an instant, the security guard was in hot pursuit, shouting at her to stop. The guard grabbed for her shoulder, and she spun back.
A bright yellow electronics-store bag slipped from inside her voluminous jacket and clattered to the floor, followed by a hot pink one from a cosmetics shop and a gauzy scarf that still had an anti-theft security tag on it.
“Hey! That’s mine!” One of the hockey teens shouted and leaped to his feet. “She stole my new phone!”
His friends laughed and some other shoppers started clapping. Ian turned away. He’d never liked watching people celebrate somebody else’s misfortune. It was too much like high school.
“Thank you.” Tala turned to him.
“Colonel Lorenza Gallo told me personally how much she values your opinion,” he said. “Several other Alaska K-9 Unit team members have, too. It was nothing personal. Any one of my fellow troopers would’ve done the same. Plus, you know, my dog, Aurora, totally believed you.”
He meant the last bit as an awkward joke. But something dimmed behind Tala’s eyes.
“Right, nothing personal,” she repeated softly. But while the exact same words had sounded positive in his head, they now seemed completely different coming from her lips.
“Hey, officer lady, that was amazing!” shouted one of the teenager boys who’d been snickering at her just moments earlier. “How did you learn to solve crimes by guessing? Are you like Sherlock Holmes or something?”
“No,” Tala told him. “Just studying plus experience.”
There was an odd edge to her voice that reminded him of the way she’d reacted whenever any of his friends made fun of how hard she’d worked in high school. Back then she’d been so dedicated to learning she’d stay up all night hitting the books. All the while, he’d been completely focused on hockey and involved in playing for the team. Sure, some of the other guys had gotten caught up in stupid stuff. But he’d never been a part of it and didn’t understand why it had bothered Tala as much as it did. It had grown even worse when the coach, who was a friend of his father’s, had taken Ian under his wing and helped him apply for sports scholarships. He’d hoped she’d be happy for him. But after a while she wouldn’t even come to the games.
Kicker was, he hadn’t even gotten a scholarship.
“Why didn’t you sic your dog on her?” another teenager asked.
“Aurora is a cadaver dog,” Ian explained. At least until he convinced his boss she should be cross-trained. He ran his hand over the dog’s shaggy head. “She only tracks dead people.”
He’d been nineteen when a college classmate had gone missing on a winter camping trip. Despite the tragedy of her death, he’d never forgotten the peace and closure it had brought to her parents when a K-9 cadaver dog had found her body in one of Alaska’s abandoned gold mines. That memory had left a lasting impression on his heart and given him a calling to the sometimes-underappreciated K-9 work of finding those who’d died and bringing them home. But while Aurora had excelled at her training, Ian had been wondering whether he should ask his boss if Aurora could be cross-trained in another specialty.
