The rain in Seattle doesn’t wash things clean. That’s a lie they tell tourists. In my twenty years on the force, I’ve learned that the rain just pushes the filth deeper into the cracks, making the mud slick and the truth harder to stand on.
And today, the mud was everywhere.
We were standing in the Serenity Hills Memorial Park, a place that cost more to rot in than most people in my neighborhood made in a lifetime. Manicured hedges, marble angels that looked like they were judging your credit score, and a hole in the ground that waited for an eight-year-old girl named Maya.
“Easy, Brutus,” I whispered, tightening my grip on the leather leash.
Brutus, my partner—eighty-five pounds of Belgian Malinois muscle and instinct—was vibrating against my leg. He wasn’t whining. He wasn’t doing that low, sad whimper dogs do when they sense loss. This was different. His ears were pinned back, his body rigid as a loaded spring. The fur along his spine was standing up in a jagged ridge.
He was working.
“Officer miller,” a voice dripped with condescension from my left. “Is it absolutely necessary for that… animal to be here?”
I turned to see Richard Sterling. He was the picture of grieving fatherhood, if grief looked like a three-thousand-dollar Italian suit and a haircut that cost more than my car note. He was holding a black umbrella over his wife, Elena, who was staring at the white casket with a blank, medicated expression.
“Maya loved this dog, Mr. Sterling,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “Brutus was the only one who found her when she ran away last year. He’s here to pay his respects. Same as you.”
Richard’s jaw tightened. “It’s unsanitary. And frankly, it’s disrespectful to the solemnity of the occasion. Maya is… was… a delicate child. She wouldn’t want a beast panting over her final resting place.”
Delicate. That was a nice way of putting it.
I looked at the small white box sitting on the lowering device. Maya hadn’t been delicate. She had been a survivor. A foster kid from the bad side of the tracks—my side of the tracks—who got lucky in the “system lottery” and was placed with the Sterlings. The wealthy, charitable Sterlings who needed a prop for their reelection campaign photos.
Maya used to sneak out of their gated mansion and run three miles to the precinct. She’d sit on the back steps, waiting for me and Brutus to come off shift. She’d have half a ham sandwich saved in her pocket for him.
“He listens to me, Officer Mike,” she’d told me once, scratching Brutus behind the ears while the dog melted into a puddle of adoration. “He doesn’t care that I don’t talk fancy. He just listens.”
Now she was dead. “Accidental fall,” the report said. A tragedy in the home. A slip down the marble staircase in the middle of the night.
I felt a tug on the leash that nearly pulled my shoulder out of the socket.
“Brutus, heel,” I commanded.
But Brutus didn’t heel. He took a step forward, dragging his boots through the expensive, imported sod. He wasn’t looking at Richard. He wasn’t looking at me. His amber eyes were locked on that white casket.
The priest, a man who looked like he’d been paid extra to keep the service short, cleared his throat. “We commit the body of Maya to the earth, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
The pallbearers, four men in matching suits who looked more like private security than family friends, stepped forward to the mechanism that would lower the girl into the dark.
Brutus let out a sound I’d never heard before.
It wasn’t a bark. It was a sound that started deep in his chest, a primal vibration that you felt in your teeth before you heard it with your ears. It was the sound of a predator sensing a threat.
“Control your dog, Officer!” Richard hissed, his face flushing a blotchy red. “This is a disgrace!”
“Something’s wrong,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
I’ve trusted this dog with my life. He’s smelled bombs buried under three feet of concrete. He’s found a missing hiker in a blizzard just by the scent of fear on a discarded glove. If Brutus said something was wrong, something was wrong.
“Lower the casket,” Richard commanded, snapping his fingers at the pallbearers. “Now.”
“Wait,” I said, stepping forward.
“Excuse me?” Richard turned on me, his eyes cold and hard like flint. “You have no authority here, Miller. This is a private funeral. You were invited as a courtesy. Don’t make me call the Chief.”
“My dog is alerting,” I said, my heart starting to hammer against my ribs. “He’s alerting on the casket.”
A ripple of murmurs went through the crowd. I saw the faces of the elite—the lawyers, the developers, the politicians. They looked at me with a mix of disgust and pity. Look at the blue-collar cop making a scene. Look at the trash bringing his trash dog to a civilized event.
“Alerting?” Elena Sterling spoke for the first time. Her voice was brittle, like dry leaves. “What do you mean?”
“He smells something,” I said. “He smells… something that shouldn’t be there.”
“She’s dead, you idiot!” Richard shouted, losing his composure. The mask of the grieving father slipped, revealing the bully underneath. “Of course she smells! She’s a corpse! Get that mongrel out of here before I have you fired and your pension stripped!”
He lunged toward me, perhaps intending to shove me back.
That was a mistake.
Brutus didn’t attack Richard. He didn’t bite. He did something worse. He ignored him.
Brutus lunged for the casket.
With a strength that defied physics, he snapped the leather leash right out of my wet hand. He bolted across the six feet of open grave and slammed his front paws onto the lid of the white coffin.
The crowd screamed. A woman in a fur coat fainted. The pallbearers stumbled back, terrified of the snarling police dog.
“Brutus! OFF!” I yelled, running forward.
But Brutus was frantic. He was scratching at the pristine white lacquer, his claws gouging deep, ugly marks into the wood. He was whining now, high and desperate. He was trying to get in.
“Shoot it!” Richard screamed, pointing a trembling finger at my partner. “Security! Shoot that damn dog!”
One of the private security guards reached for his holster.
My hand was on my service weapon before I even thought about it. “You draw that weapon, and you’ll be down before you clear the holster,” I warned, my voice dropping to that icy calm that comes over you right before a breach.
The guard froze.
“Get him off her!” Elena was sobbing now, hysterically. “He’s eating her! He’s desecrating her!”
I grabbed Brutus by the harness, trying to haul him back. “Brutus, leave it! LEAVE IT!”
But he wouldn’t. He turned his head to me, and for a split second, our eyes met.
I saw panic. I saw urgency.
And then I smelled it.
I was close enough now. The rain was washing over the casket, but underneath the smell of wet lilies and expensive cologne, there was a faint, chemical odor wafting up from the scratches Brutus had made.
It wasn’t the smell of death. I know the smell of death. It’s sweet and cloying.
This smelled like bleach. Industrial-strength bleach. And something else… metallic. Like copper.
Brutus wasn’t trying to attack the body. He was trying to retrieve.
“Officer Miller,” Richard’s voice was right behind my ear, low and menacing. “I am going to destroy you. Get your animal away from my daughter.”
“Why does she smell like bleach, Richard?” I asked, not looking at him. I kept my hand on Brutus’s harness, but I stopped pulling.
The silence that fell over the grave was heavy. Even the rain seemed to pause.
“What?” Richard whispered.
“The casket,” I said, loud enough for the crowd to hear. “My dog isn’t alerting on a body. He’s alerting on a chemical agent. And he’s signaling a ‘live find’.”
I felt the air leave the immediate vicinity.
“A… live find?” Elena gasped.
“Brutus signals differently for a cadaver,” I said, turning to face Richard. “He sits and barks for the dead. He scratches and digs for the living. Or for things that are… hidden.”
I looked back at the box. It was too small. Even for an eight-year-old, the dimensions looked wrong. And the weight… when the pallbearers were holding it, they weren’t straining.
“Open it,” I said.
“Are you insane?” Richard roared. “This is a funeral! You cannot open a casket in the middle of a funeral!”
“If there is nothing to hide, then open it and let me take my dog and leave,” I challenged. “But if you don’t, I’m calling this a crime scene right now. I’ll have the coroner here in twenty minutes with a crowbar.”
Richard looked at the crowd. He saw the doubt creeping into their eyes. He saw the whispers starting. He looked at his wife, who was staring at the box with a sudden, dawning horror.
“Richard?” she whispered. “Why… why is the dog digging?”
“He’s mad! The dog is rabid!” Richard shouted, sweat mixing with the rain on his forehead.
I didn’t wait. I looked at the security guard who had threatened to shoot my dog. He was a retired cop. I knew him.
“Joey,” I said. “You know this dog. You know he doesn’t miss. Give me a hand.”
Joey looked at Richard, then at me. He looked at the frantic dog still trying to pry the lid open. The class loyalty—blue backing blue—won out. He stepped forward.
“Don’t you touch that!” Richard lunged, but I caught him with a stiff arm to the chest, sending him stumbling back into the mud.
“Open it, Joey,” I ordered.
Joey unlatched the silver clasps. The mechanism clicked loudly in the silence.
Brutus stopped scratching. He sat down, panting, watching the lid.
Joey lifted the lid of the white casket.
A collective gasp sucked the oxygen out of the cemetery. A woman screamed, a long, piercing sound that shattered the decorum of the high-society gathering.
I looked inside.
The casket was empty of a body.
There was no Maya.
Instead, resting on the white satin pillow, were bricks. Four distinct, red construction bricks wrapped in plastic to simulate the weight of a child.
And tucked between the bricks, smeared with a substance that smelled of bleach and iron, was a blue chew toy.
The chew toy Maya had bought for Brutus with her own allowance money two weeks ago. The one she supposedly had with her when she “fell.”
My world tilted on its axis.
“Where is she?” I whispered, my voice trembling with a rage that felt like magma rising in my throat.
I turned to Richard. He wasn’t arrogant anymore. He was pale, the color of old ash. He was backing away, his expensive shoes slipping in the mud, looking for an exit.
“Where is the girl, Richard?” I roared, drawing my weapon.
But before I could step toward him, Brutus moved.
He didn’t go for Richard.
He spun around, nose to the ground, inhaling deeply. He ignored the open empty grave. He ignored the bricks. He put his nose to the wind, caught a scent that had been masked by the rain until the casket was opened and the scent inside was released.
He turned toward the edge of the cemetery, toward the old mausoleum that belonged to the Sterling family ancestors—a stone building that had been sealed for decades.
Brutus let out a bark. A sharp, demanding bark.
He ran.
“He’s got a track!” I yelled. “Joey, secure Sterling! Don’t let him leave!”
I took off running after my dog, slipping and sliding through the wet grass, past the shocked mourners, past the lies, running toward the stone crypt at the edge of the woods.
Because Brutus was right. He wasn’t mourning. He was hunting.
And Maya wasn’t in the box.
Which meant she was somewhere else.
And if Brutus was running this hard, she might still be breathing.
CHAPTER 2: THE MARBLE DUNGEON
The mud sucked at my boots, trying to drag me down, much like the city itself. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Ahead of me, Brutus was a black-and-tan streak cutting through the grey curtain of rain, his paws kicking up clods of earth as he sprinted toward the Sterling family mausoleum.
It was a gothic monstrosity of grey stone sitting on the highest hill of the cemetery, overlooking the common graves like a feudal lord staring down at his serfs. Iron gates, gargoyles—the works. It was designed to keep the dead in and the living out.
But Brutus didn’t care about trespassing laws.
He hit the heavy iron doors with a thud, his claws scrabbling against the metal. He let out that deep, vibrating bark again—the “alert” bark.
“I’m coming, buddy!” I yelled, my lungs burning.
I reached the steps, sliding on the wet marble. The doors were locked, secured with a heavy rusted padlock that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the Depression. But looking closer, I saw the scratches. Fresh, silver scratches on the old iron hasp.
Someone had been here. Recently.
“Stand back!” I shouted to Brutus.
The dog, disciplined even in his frenzy, took a step back but kept his eyes glued to the crack between the doors.
I raised my service weapon, aimed at the padlock, and squeezed the trigger.
CRACK.
The sound was swallowed by the storm. The lock shattered. I kicked the door, and it groaned open, the hinges screaming in protest.
The smell hit me instantly. Not the musty, dry smell of old bones and ancient dust. No. It smelled like antiseptic. Like a hospital hallway scrubbed raw. That same bleach smell from the casket, but stronger here. Overwhelming.
I clicked on my tactical light. The beam cut through the gloom.
“Search,” I whispered.
Brutus didn’t need telling. He bypassed the rows of stone niches where the Sterling ancestors rotted in their expensive boxes. He went straight to the back wall, to a large, ornate sarcophagus meant for the family patriarch.
He started digging at the base of it.
“What is it?” I moved closer, keeping my weapon raised.
The stone floor around the sarcophagus wasn’t dusty. It was clean. Too clean. And there were scrape marks—parallel lines etched into the floor, as if the massive stone block had been dragged.
I holstered my gun and put my shoulder against the corner of the sarcophagus. “Push, Brutus!” I grunted, straining with every ounce of leverage I had.
Of course, the dog couldn’t push, but my adrenaline was spiking so hard I felt like I could flip a car. With a grinding roar of stone-on-stone, the heavy lid didn’t move, but the entire structure rotated on a hidden pivot.
A secret passage.
It wasn’t a crypt. It was a doorway.
Below, a set of modern, concrete stairs led down into the darkness. Automatic motion-sensor lights flickered on as the door opened, revealing a sterile, white hallway.
“Jesus,” I breathed. “This isn’t a tomb. It’s a bunker.”
We descended. The air grew colder, conditioned. The hum of a generator buzzed somewhere in the walls.
At the bottom of the stairs, there was a single steel door. Heavy. Soundproof. It had a small sliding view port at eye level.
Brutus sat in front of the door and let out a low, mournful whine. He scratched the metal gently.
I tried the handle. Locked.
I stepped back and kicked it, right near the lock mechanism. Once. Twice. The wood frame splintered—this was new construction, cheap framing hidden behind the expensive facade. On the third kick, the door swung open.
I swept the room with my gun, ready for a fight.
But the room was empty of people.
It was a cell. A roughly ten-by-ten room. No windows. Just a mattress on the floor, a bucket, and a table with a tray of uneaten food.
On the walls, drawings. Dozens of them. Crayon drawings taped up on the cold concrete. Drawings of a big black dog with pointy ears. Drawings of a police car. Drawings of a house with a sad face.
I walked over to the mattress. It was still warm.
I put my hand on the sheets. Body heat.
“She was here,” I whispered, my stomach dropping. “She was here this morning.”
Brutus jumped onto the mattress and buried his nose in the pillow, inhaling deeply. Then he looked at me, his tail giving a single, hopeful thump.
She was alive.
The bricks in the coffin… the funeral… it was all a smokescreen. A timeline reset. They staged her death to stop people from asking questions, so they could move her.
But move her where? And why?
I looked around the room. In the corner, kicked under the bed, was a small, pink sneaker. I reached down and picked it up. It was muddy.
Wait.
Muddy?
If she had been kept here, inside, why was the shoe muddy with fresh, wet earth?
Unless…
I looked at the floor again. There was a trail of muddy footprints. Small ones. And large ones. Men’s boots. Leading out of the room, but not back up the stairs we came from. They led to a ventilation grate in the far corner.
The grate was loose.
“They took her out the back way,” I realized. “Through the old drainage tunnels.”
Suddenly, my radio crackled to life. But it wasn’t dispatch.
“Miller,” a voice growled. It was Chief O’Malley. “Drop it. walk away.”
I grabbed the radio. “Chief, I’ve got a kidnapping scene here! The Sterling mausoleum is a holding cell! Maya is alive! I need backup, I need a perimeter—”
“I said stand down, Miller,” O’Malley’s voice was cold, devoid of the usual camaraderie. “You are trespassing on private property. You just desecrated a grave. Sterling is pressing charges.”
“Did you hear me?” I screamed into the mic. “The girl is alive! I found her room! They faked the funeral!”
“There is no girl, Miller. Just a grieving family and a cop who snapped. Now come out with your hands up. I’ve got four units outside the crypt. Don’t make us come in.”
I froze.
I looked at Brutus. He was standing by the ventilation grate, looking back at me, waiting for the command.
I looked at the stairs behind me. If I went up there, I’d be arrested. They’d bury this. They’d destroy the room, burn the drawings, and Maya would disappear for real this time. The Sterlings had bought the funeral home, and clearly, they had bought the Chief too.
This was how it worked in America. The law protected the castle, not the peasant.
I could hear heavy boots clanging on the stone steps above. The “backup” was coming down. And they weren’t coming to help.
I holstered my gun and grabbed the pink sneaker, shoving it into my jacket pocket.
“We’re not going up, buddy,” I whispered to Brutus.
I ran to the ventilation grate and ripped it off the wall. It was tight, a dark, damp tunnel that smelled of sewage and old rainwater.
“Tunnel,” I pointed.
Brutus didn’t hesitate. He squeezed into the dark hole.
The footsteps on the stairs were getting louder. Shadows stretched across the floor of the cell.
“Police! Miller! Show me your hands!” A voice echoed down the corridor.
I didn’t answer. I dove into the tunnel after my dog, pulling the grate back into place just as the beam of a flashlight swept over the empty mattress.
I was a fugitive now. A rogue cop in a hole in the ground.
But I had the scent. And for the first time in this whole wretched case, I knew exactly who the bad guys were.
They thought burying a box of bricks would end it. They were wrong. They just started a war.
CHAPTER 3: THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
The tunnels were the veins of the city, but down here, the blood was black and smelled of rot.
I moved blindly, one hand trailing along the slime-slicked brick wall, the other holding onto Brutus’s harness. The darkness was absolute, a heavy, suffocating blanket that pressed against my eyeballs. My flashlight was off—I couldn’t risk the beam shooting up through a grate and alerting the patrol cars screaming on the streets above.
“Slow, Brutus. Slow,” I whispered. My voice echoed strangely, distorted by the cylindrical acoustics of the storm drain.
We were waist-deep in freezing water. It was runoff—rain mixed with oil, trash, and the filth of a million people living their lives above us, oblivious to the fact that a cop and a dog were trudging through their waste to save a child who didn’t matter to the tax bracket that ran this town.
My mind was racing, replaying the look on Chief O’Malley’s face in my memory. The betrayal burned hotter than the freezing water. I’d known O’Malley for fifteen years. I’d been to his barbecues. I’d watched his kids grow up. And for what? A payoff? A retirement home in Florida paid for by the Sterling Foundation?
Everyone has a price, the cynic in me whispered. Yours just hasn’t been offered yet.
“No,” I gritted my teeth. “Not this price.”
Brutus stopped. The water rippled around us. I felt his muscles tense under the wet nylon of his harness. He let out a low growl, a rumble that vibrated through the water against my thighs.
“What is it, boy?”
I risked a flash of the light. Just a second.
The beam cut through the darkness and landed on a fork in the tunnel about twenty yards ahead. To the left, the water flowed deeper into the dark. To the right, there was a concrete ledge, a maintenance platform.
And on that ledge, shining like a beacon in the gloom, was a wrapper.
A bright silver foil wrapper.
I waded over, fighting the current. I climbed onto the ledge, my boots squelching heavily. Brutus shook himself, sending a spray of dirty water everywhere, but immediately put his nose to the wrapper.
It was a granola bar wrapper. Organic Honey & Oat. The expensive kind. The kind Richard Sterling probably stocked in his pantry for his “delicate” foster daughter.
But it wasn’t just dropped. It was weighted down with a small stone.
Maya.
She was smart. Street smart. You take a kid from the projects, a kid who learned to hide from abusive parents and navigate the foster system before she could read, and you put her in a mansion? She doesn’t lose those instincts. She sharpens them. She knew someone would come. She knew Brutus would come.
“Good girl,” I whispered, pocketing the wrapper. “She went this way, Brutus. Track.”
We moved faster now. The tunnel on the right was dry, an older service passage that likely ran under the industrial sector. The air changed. The smell of sewage faded, replaced by the smell of diesel, rust, and salt.
We were heading toward the waterfront.
Thirty minutes later, the tunnel ended at a rusted iron ladder leading up to a heavy manhole cover. Light—grey, rainy daylight—was bleeding through the rim.
I climbed up, listening. The hum of heavy machinery. The beep-beep-beep of a forklift in reverse.
I pushed the cover up an inch.
We weren’t on the street. We were inside a perimeter. I saw shipping containers. Stacks of them, towering like steel canyons. And on the side of a nearby crane, the logo: STERLING LOGISTICS.
Of course.
Richard Sterling didn’t just have money; he had infrastructure. He owned the shipping lanes. If you wanted to move something—or someone—out of the country without customs asking questions, you did it here.
“Out,” I signaled to Brutus.
We scrambled out of the hole, hiding behind a stack of blue containers. The rain was still pouring, which was a blessing. It blurred visibility and drowned out the sound of our movements.
I checked my weapon. Twelve rounds. No backup. No radio—I’d tossed it in the sewer back at the fork, knowing they could trace the GPS. I was a ghost.
“Find her,” I commanded Brutus, giving him the scent of the sneaker I’d kept in my pocket.
Brutus put his nose to the wet asphalt. He moved differently now. Low to the ground, silent. He wasn’t tracking a lost child anymore; he was hunting prey. He weaved through the maze of containers, leading me deeper into the heart of the shipyard.
We reached a warehouse. Warehouse 4. It was set apart from the others, guarded by two men in rain ponchos holding AR-15s. These weren’t security guards like at the funeral. These were private military contractors. Mercenaries.
The way they stood—relaxed but alert, fingers indexed along the trigger guards—told me everything. They were pros.
“We can’t breach that,” I muttered. “Not head-on.”
Brutus whined softly, staring at a small side door that was slightly ajar. A worker was bringing out a crate.
I saw my window.
“Quiet,” I signaled.
We waited for the worker to turn his back. I moved fast, covering the distance in a crouch, Brutus glued to my leg. We slipped through the door just as it was closing.
Inside, the warehouse was a cavern of activity. But it wasn’t filled with cargo.
It was a lab.
Or something that looked like a mobile hospital. Clear plastic partitions were set up, creating sterile rooms within the dirty warehouse. Men and women in white coats were moving around.
And in the center, there were gurneys.
My blood ran cold.
There were kids.
Three of them. Sleeping? Sedated? I couldn’t tell. They were hooked up to IVs.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.
This wasn’t just about Maya. This was a farm.
I scanned the room desperately. Where was she?
Brutus stiffened. He looked toward a glass office elevated on the second level, overlooking the floor.
There.
Richard Sterling was standing behind the glass, arguing with a man in a lab coat. And sitting in a chair in the corner of the office, hugging her knees, looking small and terrified, was Maya.
She was alive.
But then I saw the man in the lab coat point to his watch, then point to Maya. He picked up a syringe.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest. They were prepping her. For what? A harvest? A transfer?
I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a SWAT team. I had a dog and a gun and a burning rage that felt like it was going to consume me.
I looked down at Brutus. He looked up at me. His amber eyes were clear. He knew the mission.
Protect the pack.
I knelt down and unclipped his leash. I leaned close to his ear.
“Fass,” I whispered. The German command for bite. But I added the modifier we only used in extreme situations. “Fass. Pack leader.”
I pointed at the glass office.
Brutus didn’t bark. He didn’t growl. He launched himself.
He was a missile. He cleared the stairs in three bounds.
At the same time, I stepped out from behind the crates, raised my weapon, and fired a shot into the ceiling.
BLAM!
“POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” I roared, my voice cracking with the strain.
Chaos erupted. The doctors screamed and dove for cover. The mercenaries at the door spun around, raising their rifles.
But they were too slow for the blur of black and tan that hit the glass office door.
Richard Sterling turned just in time to see eighty-five pounds of fury crash through the glass pane.
CRASH!
Brutus was in the room.
Richard screamed—a high, pathetic sound—as Brutus clamped onto his forearm, the one holding the phone. The dog dragged him to the ground, shaking him like a rag doll.
“Run, Maya! RUN!” I yelled, taking cover behind a forklift as bullets started pinging off the metal around me.
The mercenaries were firing. They didn’t care about the kids. They were spraying the area.
“Suppressing fire!” one of them shouted.
I popped up and fired two rounds. One mercenary grabbed his leg and went down. The other ducked.
Up in the office, it was bedlam. Brutus had Sterling pinned. The doctor had tried to intervene, but Brutus had snapped at him, driving him into a corner.
Maya jumped up. She looked down at the warehouse floor, then at me.
“Officer Mike!” she screamed.
“Jump, baby! Jump onto the crates!” I yelled.
She scrambled out the broken window, leaping onto a stack of pallets just below the office.
“Get the girl!” the mercenary commander shouted.
I saw a third guard running from the back, heading straight for Maya. He had a taser in his hand.
“No you don’t,” I growled.
I broke cover. It was suicide, but I had to draw their fire. I ran across the open floor, firing as I went.
“Over here! You want me? Come get me!”
Bullets tore up the concrete at my heels. A shard of shrapnel sliced my cheek. I slid behind a heavy steel workbench, pinned down.
“Brutus! Hier! Bring her!” I yelled the recall command.
Up in the office, Brutus released Sterling’s mangled arm. Sterling was sobbing, curled in a ball of expensive wool and blood.
Brutus leaped out the window, landing beside Maya on the pallets. He barked at her, nudging her leg. Move.
Maya understood. She grabbed Brutus’s harness.
The guard with the taser was closing in on them.
“Brutus, take him!” I yelled.
Brutus launched himself off the pallets, hitting the guard mid-chest. The man went down hard, the taser clattering away. Brutus didn’t stay to fight; he scrambled back to Maya, shielding her body with his own.
They were cut off. I was pinned down. The mercenaries were regrouping, closing in a circle around us.
“Give it up, Miller!” a voice boomed over the PA system. It was Sterling, his voice shaky and wet with pain. “You can’t win! Look around you! You’re nothing! You’re a civil servant making fifty grand a year fighting a billion-dollar industry! Walk away and I’ll let you live!”
I checked my mag. Three rounds left.
I looked at Maya, huddled behind a crate with Brutus. She was crying, but she was holding onto the dog’s fur like it was a lifeline.
“I don’t work for the money, Richard!” I shouted back. “And I sure as hell don’t work for you!”
I needed a distraction. Something big.
My eyes landed on the row of gas cylinders next to the welding station ten feet away. Oxygen and Acetylene.
I looked at the mercenaries advancing on Maya.
“Close your eyes, honey!” I screamed.
I aimed my pistol at the valve of the acetylene tank.
Please don’t miss.
I squeezed the trigger.
The explosion wasn’t like in the movies. It was a deafening WHUMP of concussive force that knocked the wind out of everyone. A ball of orange fire rolled across the ceiling. The sprinkler system triggered instantly, filling the warehouse with a torrential downpour of black, oily water.
“GO! NOW!”
In the confusion, amidst the steam and the screaming alarms, I broke from cover. I grabbed Maya, tucking her under my arm like a football. Brutus was right beside me, snapping at anyone who came close.
We hit the side door, bursting out into the cool, rainy afternoon air of the docks.
But we weren’t free.
We were on a loading dock, the grey water of the Puget Sound churning below us. And blocking the only exit from the pier was a black SUV.
Chief O’Malley stepped out.
He wasn’t holding a gun. He was holding a phone.
And behind him, flanking the car, were four uniformed officers. My brothers in blue.
“It’s over, Mike,” O’Malley shouted over the rain. “Put the girl down. The dog goes to animal control. You go to a cell. And we forget this ever happened.”
I stood there, panting, bleeding, holding a terrified child, with my dog growling at the men I used to call friends.
I looked at the water. It was a thirty-foot drop.
I looked at O’Malley.
“You picked the wrong side, Chief,” I said.
I looked at Brutus. “Trust me?”
The dog looked at me.
I grabbed Maya tight. “Take a deep breath.”
“Mike, don’t you do it!” O’Malley screamed, drawing his weapon.
I didn’t hesitate.
“JUMP!”
I leaped off the edge of the pier, clutching the girl, with Brutus diving right beside us into the freezing, dark waters of the Sound.
CHAPTER 4: DEAD MEN WALKING
The water of Puget Sound hits you like a sledgehammer wrapped in ice. It punches the air out of your lungs and replaces it with panic.
I went under, the weight of my boots and tactical vest dragging me down like an anchor. The darkness was absolute. For a second, I thought, This is it. This is how it ends. Not in a blaze of glory, but drowning in the sewage and salt of the city I tried to save.
Then I felt something hook into my vest.
Teeth.
Brutus.
He was thrashing, fighting the current, his jaws clamped onto my shoulder strap, pulling me up. Even in the freezing water, even with the chaos, he wouldn’t let his partner sink.
I kicked, my legs screaming, and broke the surface, gasping for air. The rain was still hammering down, churning the water into a froth.
“Maya!” I choked out, spitting saltwater.
“I got her!”
I didn’t say that. I heard it. But it wasn’t a voice; it was a sensation. A splash nearby. I saw a small head bobbing in the waves, clinging to a piece of driftwood. She was freezing, her lips blue, but she was fighting.
“Grab the dog!” I yelled to her. “Hold onto Brutus!”
She reached out, grabbing Brutus’s harness. The dog became our engine. With powerful, desperate strokes, he towed us away from the pier, away from the lights of the police cruisers reflecting on the water, and into the shadows of the pilings.
We drifted for what felt like hours, but was probably only twenty minutes, carried by the tide under the massive concrete supports of the highway bridge.
We washed up on a stretch of jagged rocks and trash—a homeless encampment hidden from the glistening city above.
I crawled onto the stones, my body shaking so violently I could barely stand. I dragged Maya up, then grabbed Brutus’s collar. He collapsed on the wet gravel, panting, shivering.
“We… we need to keep moving,” I stammered, my teeth chattering like dice in a cup. “Hypothermia… it’s fast.”
I stripped off my soaked tactical vest and jacket. I wrapped Maya in the jacket, though it was wet, it was a windbreaker. It was better than nothing.
“Officer Mike,” Maya whispered, her voice tiny. “Why… why did the Chief want to shoot us?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? The question that broke my heart. How do you explain to an eight-year-old that the monsters aren’t under the bed? They’re in the precinct. They wear badges. They sign the checks.
“Because they’re bad men, Maya,” I said, checking my pistol. It was a Glock—plastic and steel. It would fire wet. But I only had one magazine left. “And we know their secrets.”
We stumbled up the embankment, away from the water. We needed a place. A safe house. But I couldn’t go to my apartment. I couldn’t go to the station. I was burned. Every cop in the city would have my face on their dashboard by now.
We were in the industrial district. Warehouses, auto body shops, places that closed at 5 PM.
“Doc,” I muttered.
“Who?” Maya asked.
“An old friend. Come on.”
We stuck to the alleys. Brutus was limping slightly on his front left leg. I checked it quickly under a streetlamp—a gash from the glass he’d shattered. It needed stitches.
We made it to a run-down building with a flickering neon sign: PIONEER VETERINARY CLINIC.
It was closed. But I knew Doc lived upstairs. Doc wasn’t a regular vet. He was an ex-combat medic who got his license revoked for prescribing painkillers to vets with PTSD who the VA had abandoned. He treated the dogs of the homeless, the drug dealers, and the cops who didn’t want questions asked.
I banged on the metal back door. Three knocks. Pause. Two knocks.
A slide viewer opened. Eyes peered out, narrowed and suspicious.
“Miller?” The voice was rough, like gravel in a blender. “You look like hell warmed over.”
“Open the door, Doc. Please. I got a kid. I got Brutus.”
The bolts slid back. The door opened, and we fell inside into the smell of rubbing alcohol and dog food.
“Jesus, Mike,” Doc hissed, locking the door behind us. He was a skinny guy with tattoos up his neck and hands that never shook. “Do you know what’s on the news?”
He grabbed a remote and clicked on the small TV mounted in the corner of the waiting room.
BREAKING NEWS: ROGUE OFFICER KIDNAPS CHILD.
My face was plastered on the screen. A mugshot from ten years ago.
“Officer Michael Miller, a K9 handler, is considered armed and dangerous,” the anchorwoman said, her face grave. “He is accused of abducting Maya Sterling, the foster daughter of philanthropist Richard Sterling, during her funeral today. Police Chief O’Malley states that Miller suffered a mental break and dug up the empty casket in a delusional episode before fleeing with the girl, who was found wandering near the cemetery.”
“Lies!” Maya shouted at the TV. “That’s a lie! I was in the warehouse!”
“They control the narrative, kid,” Doc said, turning off the TV. He looked at me. “You dug up a casket?”
“It was empty, Doc. Bricks,” I said, leaning against the exam table. “They faked her death. They were shipping her out. Trafficking. And O’Malley is in on it.”
Doc whistled low. “You stepped in it deep this time, brother. You kicked the hornet’s nest, and it turns out the hornets own the city.”
He looked at Brutus, who was leaving bloody paw prints on the linoleum. “Let’s fix the dog first. He looks like he went ten rounds with a chainsaw.”
Doc worked fast. He shaved Brutus’s leg, cleaned the wound, and started stitching. Brutus didn’t even flinch. He just kept his eyes on the door, watching.
“You can’t stay here,” Doc said, tying off a suture. “They’ll sweep the area. They’ll check known associates.”
“I know,” I said. “I just need a car. A burner phone. And…” I looked at Maya. “I need to know what they were doing to her.”
Doc looked at Maya. He walked over and gently checked her eyes with a penlight. He checked her arms.
“Fresh needle marks,” Doc murmured. “Antecubital fossa. Left arm.”
He took a blood sample from her. “I can run a quick tox screen. Give me ten minutes.”
While the centrifuge spun, I sat on the floor with Maya. She was eating a can of dog food—not because we didn’t have human food, but because she insisted on sharing it with Brutus.
“Maya,” I asked softly. “What did you see in that warehouse? Why were you there?”
She swallowed a bite of crackers Doc had given her. “They called it ‘The Harvest’,” she whispered.
My blood ran cold.
“They took the other kids,” she continued, staring at her knees. “They took Toby. They took Sarah. They put them in the crates. The men in the white coats… they talked about… parts.”
“Organs,” I realized, the horror settling in my gut like lead. “Sterling isn’t trafficking kids for… that. He’s trafficking them for transplants.”
Rich people needing kidneys, hearts, livers. Not wanting to wait on the list. Paying millions for a ‘donor’ that matched. And who goes missing easier than foster kids? Kids nobody looks for. Kids the system forgot.
Ping.
The machine beeped. Doc walked over, holding a printout. His face was pale.
“Mike,” he said. “She’s full of immunosuppressants. Heavy duty ones. The kind you give a patient before a transplant. They were prepping her.”
“She wasn’t the donor,” I realized. “She was the recipient? No, that doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” Doc shook his head. “Wait. This marker… H-Antigen matches. It’s rare.”
He looked at me. “Richard Sterling. Didn’t he have a son? A biological son?”
“Yeah,” I recalled. “Died years ago. Leukemia.”
“No,” Doc said. “He didn’t die. He’s in a private clinic in Switzerland. I remember reading about it in a medical journal. Experimental treatments. He needs bone marrow. Constant transfusions. And organs eventually.”
“Maya is a spare parts bin,” I spat, the rage blinding me. “He adopted her to harvest her piece by piece for his son.”
It was monstrous. It was evil on a level that made standard street crime look like charity work.
“I have to kill him,” I said quietly. It wasn’t a threat. It was a statement of fact.
“You can’t get to him,” Doc said. “He’s in a fortress by now. And you have every cop in Washington State looking for you.”
Suddenly, Brutus stood up. He let out a low growl, facing the back door we had entered through.
The hair on his neck stood up.
“Someone’s here,” I whispered.
“I didn’t call anyone!” Doc swore, raising his hands.
Brutus barked. Loud. Aggressive.
Then the window at the front of the clinic shattered. A canister rolled across the floor, hissing.
Flashbang.
“DOWN!” I tackled Maya, covering her body with mine.
BOOM!
The world turned white. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine.
“Breaching! Breaching! Go! Go!” Voices screamed from the front.
They had found us. How?
I grabbed Maya and dragged her toward the back door. Doc was coughing, blinded.
“Get out of here, Mike!” Doc yelled, grabbing a shotgun from under the counter. “I’ll buy you time!”
“Doc, no!”
“GO!”
Doc racked the slide of the shotgun and fired blindly at the front entrance.
I kicked the back door open.
We were in the alley again. Rain. Dark.
“Freeze! Police!” A figure stepped out from behind a dumpster.
It was Joey. The guard from the funeral. The retired cop who had hesitated.
He had his gun drawn, aimed right at my chest.
“Don’t make me do it, Mike,” Joey said, his voice shaking. “They have my pension. They have everything. O’Malley said to kill on sight.”
“Joey, look at her!” I yelled, gesturing to Maya. “She’s a kid! They are chopping them up for parts! You want that on your soul?”
Joey wavered. He looked at Maya, huddled against my leg. He looked at Brutus, who was snarling, blood seeping through his fresh bandages.
“I can’t let you go, Mike,” Joey whispered. “They’re watching.”
He tapped his ear. An earpiece.
I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t shoot Joey. He was a good man in a bad spot.
“Brutus,” I said softly. “Hold.”
I stepped forward. “Joey. Listen to me. You let us pass, or you shoot me. Right here. Center mass. But if you shoot me, that dog is going to tear your throat out before you can cycle the slide. You know he will.”
Joey stared at Brutus. He saw the death in those amber eyes.
“Five seconds, Joey,” I said. “Live with it or die for it.”
Joey looked at the camera mounted on the telephone pole above us. Then he looked at me.
He holstered his gun.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.
“Blue F-150. Around the corner. It’s my personal truck,” Joey said, tears mixing with the rain on his face. “Get out of here, Miller. Go to hell.”
“I’m already there, brother,” I said, snatching the keys.
We ran.
Behind us, I heard gunfire erupting from the clinic. Doc was making his stand.
We piled into the truck. Brutus in the back seat with Maya. Me behind the wheel.
I floored it, tires screeching, peeling out onto the wet asphalt just as two SWAT vans screeched around the corner.
We were mobile. But we had nowhere to go.
“Where are we going?” Maya asked, shivering.
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. I looked at the dog who had saved my life three times today.
“We’re going to the one place they won’t look,” I said, gripping the wheel until my knuckles turned white. “We’re going to the lion’s den.”
“Sterling’s house?” Maya gasped.
“No,” I said, eyes narrowing at the road ahead. “To the Chief’s house. We’re going to have a little chat with O’Malley’s wife.”
Because if you want to hurt a man, you don’t attack his wallet. You attack his home. And I was done playing by the book. The book was written by liars.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the burner phone Doc had slipped me. I dialed a number I hadn’t called in ten years.
“Hello?” A female voice answered. Sleepy. Confused.
“Sarah,” I said. “It’s Mike. Don’t hang up. I need you to open the door. I’m coming over. And I’m bringing the truth.”
Sarah O’Malley. The Chief’s wife. And my ex-fiancée.
CHAPTER 5: BLOOD ON THE SUBURBAN LAWN
The suburbs are quieter than the city, but they hide just as much sin. The rain had softened to a steady drizzle by the time we pulled Joey’s truck into the driveway of a two-story colonial in Bellevue.
Manicured lawn. American flag on the porch. A wreath on the door. It was the picture of the American Dream—paid for by blood money.
“Stay down,” I told Maya. “Brutus, watch her.”
I walked to the door. My hand was shaking, not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash. I rang the bell.
The door opened. Sarah stood there in a silk robe, her face pale, eyes wide. She looked older than I remembered, but still beautiful. And right now, she looked terrified.
“Mike,” she breathed, pulling me inside and slamming the door. “Are you insane? There are SWAT teams rolling down I-5 looking for you. They say you killed a kid.”
“Do I look like a killer, Sarah?” I asked, standing in her foyer, dripping wet, smelling of sewer water and burnt gunpowder.
She looked at me. Really looked at me. She saw the desperation. The exhaustion.
“No,” she whispered. “You look like a man who’s about to die.”
“I need you to trust me,” I said. “One last time.”
I went back to the door and whistled.
The truck door opened. Brutus jumped out, then waited for Maya. The little girl climbed down, clutching the oversize police jacket around her shoulders. She walked up the path, limping, holding onto the dog’s fur.
Sarah gasped when she saw Maya. “Is that…?”
“The girl I killed,” I said grimly. “Alive. And full of drugs Richard Sterling pumped into her.”
We moved into the living room. Sarah got a blanket for Maya and a bowl of water for Brutus. The domestic normalcy of it was jarring.
“Patrick… he told me you snapped,” Sarah said, sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring at Maya. “He said you couldn’t handle the job anymore.”
“Patrick is the job, Sarah. Or what the job has become,” I said. “He’s working with Sterling. They’re farming foster kids for organs. It’s a supply chain. And Patrick is the security.”
“That’s impossible,” she shook her head, tears welling up. “He’s the Chief of Police. He’s a good man.”
“Is he?” I walked over to the mantle. There was a photo of them on a boat. A boat that cost more than a cop’s salary. “Where did the money come from, Sarah? The boat? The vacation home in Aspen? His salary is public record. How does he afford this life?”
Sarah went silent. She knew. Deep down, she had always known something was wrong. The late nights. The cash in the safe. The nervous energy.
“He keeps a ledger,” I said, guessing. Men like O’Malley always kept insurance. If Sterling ever turned on him, O’Malley would need leverage. “Where is it?”
Sarah looked at the study door. “He has a wall safe behind the painting. But I don’t know the combination.”
“Brutus might not know numbers,” I said, walking to the study. “But I know Patrick.”
I walked into the study. It smelled of cigars and leather. I pulled the painting of the hunting dogs off the wall. A digital keypad.
“Birthdays?” I asked.
“Tried them,” Sarah said from the doorway.
I looked at the keypad. The numbers 4, 2, and 0 were slightly more worn than the others.
4-2-0.
Badge numbers.
I punched in 4208. My old badge number. The number of the partner he started with. The partner he betrayed today.
Beep. Click.
The safe swung open.
It was a punch to the gut. He used my number. Was it guilt? Or was it a trophy?
Inside, there was a stack of cash, a passport, and a black hard drive.
I grabbed the drive. “This is it.”
“Mike!” Maya screamed from the living room.
I spun around, drawing my empty gun before remembering I had Joey’s spare ammo in the truck. I was dry.
“Brutus!” I yelled.
I ran into the living room.
Chief O’Malley was standing in the open front doorway. He was dripping wet, his service weapon raised. But he wasn’t aiming at me.
He was aiming at Brutus.
“Sit,” O’Malley commanded, his voice shaking.
Brutus stood between O’Malley and Maya. He was growling, a low, demonic sound. He was ready to die for her.
“Patrick, don’t!” Sarah screamed, stepping in front of me.
“Move, Sarah,” O’Malley said, his eyes dead. “You don’t understand. It’s too big. If I don’t fix this… if I don’t close this loop… Sterling will kill us all. He’ll kill you.”
“So you kill a child?” I stepped out from behind Sarah. “You kill my dog?”
“I have to!” O’Malley roared, tears streaming down his face. “I’m in too deep, Mike! There’s no way out!”
He shifted his aim toward Maya.
“NO!” I lunged.
But Brutus was faster.
BANG!
The gun went off.
Brutus yelped—a sharp, high-pitched sound—but he didn’t stop. He hit O’Malley in the chest, driving him backward out the front door and onto the wet porch.
They tumbled down the steps. The gun skittered away into the grass.
Brutus was on top of him. But Brutus wasn’t biting his throat. He was pinning him, snarling in his face, snapping jaws inches from O’Malley’s nose. Even now, the dog followed protocol. Subdue. Don’t kill.
I ran out and kicked O’Malley in the ribs, flipping him over. I grabbed his handcuffs from his belt and cuffed him to the porch railing.
“Brutus!” I called.
Brutus limped over to me.
I fell to my knees. “Buddy? Let me see.”
There was blood on his flank. A graze. The bullet had taken a chunk of fur and skin, but it hadn’t hit the vitals.
“He’s okay,” I choked out, hugging the massive dog’s neck. “He’s okay.”
O’Malley was spitting blood on the steps. “You’re a fool, Miller. You got the drive? Good for you. Who are you going to show it to? The judges? Sterling owns them. The FBI? Sterling has dinner with the Director. You have nowhere to go.”
I stood up, holding the hard drive. The rain was washing the blood off the porch.
“I’m not going to the cops, Patrick,” I said, looking down at him. “I’m going to the one place Sterling can’t buy.”
“Where?” O’Malley sneered.
“The public,” I said. “The Court of Public Opinion. It’s prime time, Patrick. And there’s a Mariners game tonight. Fifty thousand people. And a live broadcast.”
I looked at Sarah. She was standing in the doorway, holding Maya. She picked up O’Malley’s car keys from the bowl.
“Take his car,” Sarah said, her voice hard. She looked at her husband, cuffed to the rail, broken and pathetic. “It has the sirens. You’ll need them.”
“Sarah…” O’Malley pleaded.
She closed the door on him.
I grabbed the keys. “Let’s go, Maya. Brutus, load up.”
We jumped into the Chief’s black interceptor SUV. I threw the lights and sirens on. The night lit up with red and blue.
“Where are we going?” Maya asked, strapping herself in.
I merged onto the highway, weaving through traffic, the engine roaring.
“T-Mobile Park,” I said. “We’re going to crash a baseball game.”
I looked at the hard drive on the seat next to me. This wasn’t just evidence. It was a bomb. And I was about to detonate it in the middle of the city.
But in the rearview mirror, I saw headlights. Fast ones.
Black SUVs. No markings.
Sterling’s private army. They weren’t using sirens. They were leaning out of windows with automatic rifles.
“Get down!” I yelled as the back window shattered.
The chase wasn’t over. It was just beginning. And we had ten miles of highway between us and the truth.
CHAPTER 6: THE FINAL INNING
The highway was a blur of rain-slicked asphalt and red taillights. The speedometer on the Chief’s interceptor was buried past 120 mph, the engine screaming like a dying animal.
Behind us, the black SUVs were gaining. These guys weren’t worried about collateral damage. A bullet shattered the side mirror, sending glass spraying into the cabin.
“Get down, Maya!” I shouted, swerving across three lanes to dodge a burst of automatic fire. The SUV fishtailed, tires smoking, but the electronic stability control caught us.
“They’re going to ram us!” Maya screamed, looking out the back window.
“Hold on!”
I slammed the brakes. It was a risky move, something they teach you never to do at high speeds unless you have a death wish. But I needed them to overshoot.
The lead mercenary SUV couldn’t stop in time. It clipped my rear bumper, wobbled violently, and spun out, crashing into the concrete divider in a shower of sparks and metal.
One down. Two to go.
“Good driving,” I muttered to myself, wrestling the wheel back under control.
We were coming up on the exit for the stadium. I could see the glow of the lights illuminating the heavy clouds. T-Mobile Park. The Mariners were playing the Yankees. It was a sold-out game. That meant cameras. That meant witnesses.
But the off-ramp was gridlocked. A sea of cars.
“We can’t get through!” Maya cried.
“We’re not taking the road,” I said, eyeing the grass embankment that led down to the stadium parking lots. “Brace yourselves!”
I jerked the wheel right. The heavy SUV launched off the shoulder, hitting the mud and grass. We bounced violently, airborne for a terrifying second, before slamming down onto the access road below. The suspension groaned, metal crunching, but we were moving.
We tore through the VIP parking lot, weaving between limousines and luxury cars.
“There!” I pointed. The Loading Dock entrance. A massive roll-up door guarded by stadium security.
I didn’t slow down. I flashed the high beams and blared the siren. The security guards dove out of the way just as I smashed through the wooden arm barrier.
We were in the tunnels. The bowels of the stadium.
The remaining mercenary SUV was right on my tail. They had followed us down the embankment.
“I need to get to the control booth,” I said, scanning the signage. BROADCAST CONTROL – LEVEL 3.
I screeched to a halt near the service elevators.
“Out! Now!”
I grabbed the hard drive. Maya scrambled out, Brutus right beside her.
The black SUV roared around the corner, screeching to a halt. Four men in tactical gear poured out, weapons raised.
“Go to the elevator!” I shoved Maya toward the doors. “Brutus, Wache! Guard!”
I took cover behind a stack of beer kegs and fired my last few rounds from Joey’s pistol. I pinned them down for a second—just enough time for the elevator doors to open.
We piled in. I hit the button for Level 3.
As the doors closed, bullets pinged off the steel frame.
“Are they coming up?” Maya asked, her eyes wide with terror.
“They’ll take the stairs,” I said, checking the hard drive. It was dented, but the connector looked intact. “We have two minutes, maybe less.”
The elevator dinged. Level 3. The press box level.
We ran down the carpeted hallway, pushing past confused reporters and concession workers. I looked like a maniac—blood on my face, wet clothes, gun in hand, followed by a limping police dog and a mud-covered child.
“Security!” someone shouted.
“Police business! Move!” I roared, shoulder-checking a security guard who tried to block me.
I kicked open the door marked VIDEO CONTROL ROOM.
Inside, it was like a spaceship. Banks of monitors, soundboards, and three tech guys in headsets who looked up in shock.
“Nobody move!” I yelled. “You! Who runs the Jumbotron?”
A skinny guy with a beard raised a trembling hand. “I… I do.”
I slammed the hard drive onto his console. “Plug it in. Now.”
“I can’t just—”
“Do it!” I shouted, pointing the empty gun at the screen. “Or I swear to God I will dismantle this room with my bare hands!”
The guy scrambled. He plugged the drive into the master ingest port.
“What’s on it?” he asked, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“The truth,” I said.
On the monitors, I saw the file list. HARVEST_LOGS.mp4, TRANSFERS.xls, STERLING_CONFESSION_CAM_1.avi.
The mercenaries were pounding on the heavy soundproof door behind us. They were here.
“Play the video file,” I ordered. “Overwrite the live feed. Put it on the big screen.”
“The door’s giving way!” Maya screamed, clutching Brutus.
BOOM. The door buckled.
“Almost there…” the tech guy stammered. “Bypassing the delay…”
The door flew open.
Three mercenaries stormed in.
“Drop it!” the leader screamed, raising his rifle.
I stepped in front of Maya and the tech guy. I had no bullets. I had no weapon. I just had my body.
“Brutus!” I yelled.
But before Brutus could move, a sound filled the room. A massive, booming sound that echoed not just in the booth, but through the entire stadium outside.
“…the liver is a match. The girl is prepped. We do the extraction tonight.”
It was Richard Sterling’s voice. Crystal clear.
The mercenaries froze. They looked at the monitors.
On the Jumbotron—that massive, sixty-foot high screen overlooking fifty thousand fans—the baseball game was gone.
In its place was grainy, black-and-white footage from a hidden camera. It showed Richard Sterling standing in the warehouse lab. He was standing over a sedated child. He was laughing.
“Make sure the incision is clean. My son needs this tissue viable. And dispose of the rest. Incinerate the remains like the others.”
The stadium went silent. The cheer of the crowd died instantly. Fifty thousand people stared up at the screen in horror.
In the control booth, the mercenary leader lowered his rifle. He looked at the screen, then at me. Even a hired killer has lines he won’t cross. Or maybe he just realized that with fifty thousand witnesses, there was no way to clean this up.
“It’s over,” I said, staring him down. “Look at the field.”
I pointed to the monitor showing the VIP box.
The camera cut to the luxury suite behind home plate. Richard Sterling was there. He was standing with a glass of champagne, his face frozen in a rictus of terror as he stared up at his own confession.
The crowd turned.
It started as a low rumble, then grew into a roar. It wasn’t a cheer. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated fury. Tens of thousands of people turned toward the VIP box. Debris started flying—cups, hot dogs, anything they could throw.
“He’s there!” someone screamed over the PA system. “Get him!”
The mercenary leader looked at his team. “We’re leaving.”
They backed out of the room, fleeing not from me, but from the inevitable swarm of police that would be descending on the building in seconds.
I slumped against the console, sliding down to the floor.
“We did it,” I whispered.
Maya ran to me, burying her face in my chest. Brutus licked the blood off my cheek, his tail thumping weakly against the carpet.
I looked at the monitor. Security guards were swarming the VIP box, not to protect Sterling, but to arrest him. I saw FBI jackets. I saw chaos.
But for the first time in a long time, it was the right kind of chaos.
EPILOGUE: THE QUIET AFTER THE STORM
Three months later.
The rain in Seattle was still falling, but it didn’t feel as heavy anymore.
I sat on the porch of a cabin near the foothills of the Cascades. It was quiet here. No sirens. No city noise. Just the sound of the wind in the pines.
The front door opened, and Maya stepped out. She looked different. Heavier, healthier. Her hair was grown out, no longer the choppy cut of a foster kid trying to make herself invisible. She was holding two mugs of hot chocolate.
“Here, Mike,” she said, handing me one.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
She sat on the swing next to me. “Is he coming back?”
She pointed to the yard, where Brutus was chasing a squirrel with the enthusiasm of a puppy. His limp was gone, though he had a jagged scar on his flank that parted his fur.
“He always comes back,” I said, smiling. “He knows where dinner is.”
The fallout had been nuclear.
The video on the Jumbotron had gone global in minutes. “The Stadium Confession,” they called it. Richard Sterling was currently in federal custody without bail, facing charges that would keep him locked up for three lifetimes. His assets were frozen, his “charities” dismantled.
Chief O’Malley had taken a plea deal. He gave up the entire network—judges, doctors, logistics managers—in exchange for a reduced sentence. He was looking at twenty years. Sarah had divorced him the day after the arrest.
As for me?
I was a hero for about fifteen minutes. Then I was a liability. The department quietly retired me with a full pension and a nondisclosure agreement. They didn’t want a rogue cop on the force, even if he was right.
I didn’t care. I got what I wanted.
I looked at the adoption papers sitting on the small table between us. The ink was finally dry.
“Doc says Brutus is fully healed,” Maya said, watching the dog.
“Doc is a miracle worker,” I agreed. Doc had been cleared of any wrongdoing, thanks to a very expensive lawyer paid for by a GoFundMe campaign that raised two million dollars for the “Vet Who Saved the Girl.”
“So,” Maya swung her legs. “What do we do now? Are we going to solve mysteries?”
I laughed. “No more mysteries, Maya. No more chasing bad guys.”
“Boring,” she rolled her eyes.
“Boring is good,” I said. “Boring means we’re safe.”
Brutus gave up on the squirrel and trotted back to the porch. He shook himself dry, spraying water all over us.
“Hey!” Maya giggled, wiping her face.
Brutus sat down in front of us. He looked at Maya, then at me. He let out a soft “woof” and rested his heavy head on my knee.
I scratched him behind the ears, right in that spot that made his leg twitch.
We weren’t rich. We weren’t famous anymore. We were just a washed-up cop, a foster kid with too many nightmares, and a dog who was too loyal for his own good.
But as I looked out at the mist rolling over the mountains, I realized something.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t smell the rot. I didn’t smell the lies or the bleach or the old money.
I just smelled the pine. Clean, sharp, and real.
“Come on,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go inside. I think Brutus wants his steak.”
“He always wants steak,” Maya said, grabbing my hand.
We walked inside, the three of us, and closed the door against the cold.
The world was still full of monsters. But they knew where we lived now. And they knew that if they ever came knocking again, the dog wouldn’t be the only one biting.