Lieutenant Marcus Hale entered the storage corridor with two soldiers behind him and an expression that felt too prepared.
“Why is the dog in my logistics cage?” he asked.
Charlie kept one hand near Ranger’s lead.
“Captain Cole ordered a sweep.”
Marcus looked at the tan case.
Then at Ranger.
Then at Charlie.
“He false-alerted.”
Charlie did not answer.
Marcus stepped closer.
“That case was cleared.”
“By who?”
“By logistics.”
Charlie looked at the label again. “It is not on my training sheet.”
“It does not need to be on your training sheet.”
“If it is in a K9 storage lane during a sweep, I document the alert.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“You document too much.”
That sentence stayed with Charlie.
At the time, it sounded like anger.
Later, it sounded like motive.
Captain Cole arrived five minutes later. He did not argue in the corridor. He asked Charlie for a verbal summary, photographed the case, and ordered it secured in place. Marcus insisted the case belonged to a contractor transfer and had been misplaced by a junior soldier. Cole did not accuse him of lying.
He simply said, “Then nobody will object to locking it down until morning.”
Marcus objected.
Not directly. Not enough to look guilty.
But enough for Charlie to notice.
The case stayed sealed overnight.
That should have ended the matter until morning.
It did not.
At 22:13, a camera near the storage annex stopped recording for three minutes.
At 22:16, the camera resumed.
At 22:18, Ranger began barking inside his kennel.
Charlie had been finishing paperwork nearby and heard him. Ranger did not bark at wind, other dogs, or random base noise. When he barked like that, something had changed. Charlie ran to the kennel line and found Ranger standing at the front of his run, body rigid, nose lifted toward the supply annex.
Charlie called Captain Cole.
Cole told him to stay put and not approach the annex alone.
That order saved him.
Because when security reviewed the storage corridor the next morning, the tan case had been moved six feet from its original position. The outer latch showed fresh tool marks. Someone had attempted to open it and failed. The case had also been wiped down with a damp cloth that smelled faintly of citrus.
Not orange juice exactly.
But close enough that Cole remembered it when Marcus stepped into the training yard the next morning with a cup in his hand.