Chapter 6 - The Breach at Georgetown
Forty minutes.
The drive from the medical examiner’s office to the South Precinct kennel facility took twelve minutes running hot with sirens. But I didn't have sirens. I didn't have a badge. I was driving my personal 2018 Ford F-150 through sheets of sideways Seattle rain, the windshield wipers slapping furiously against the glass.
My service weapon was locked in Henderson’s safe, but beneath the rear seat of my truck was my personal lockbox.
I popped the biometric lock with my thumbprint while stopped at a red light on 4th Avenue South. Inside lay my Springfield Armory 1911 .45 ACP, four loaded eight-round magazines, an LED tactical flashlight throwing two thousand lumens, and a spare tactical harness with a heavy-duty climbing carabiner.
Julian Vance wasn't at the precinct kennel. The text message had said *Rainier Brewery*. The video stream had been pre-recorded, or—more terrifyingly—Julian had an inside conduit.
I didn't head for the precinct. I took the Spokane Street exit and hammered the throttle toward the cavernous, rotting brick silhouette of the abandoned Rainier Brewery complex looming beside Interstate 5.
The brewery was a graveyard of industrial Seattle history. Dozens of interconnected brick warehouses, rusted grain silos, and subterranean drainage tunnels that emptied directly into the Duwamish River. If you wanted to make a body, or an animal, disappear without a trace, there was no better place within city limits.
I killed the truck’s headlights two blocks out, coasting down the cracked asphalt of an alley overgrown with blackberry brambles.
The rain drummed against the aluminum roof of the truck like a firing squad.
I strapped the .45 to my hip, slid two spare magazines into my jacket pocket, and grabbed my tactical medical kit containing three doses of universal atropine auto-injectors—standard issue for K9 handlers exposed to nerve agents or organophosphates.
If Julian had poisoned Titan with a commercial pesticide or a cholinesterase inhibitor, atropine was his only hope.
I slipped out into the freezing deluge, pulling my black watch cap down tight over my forehead.
The southern loading dock of the bottling plant hung open, a gaping black mouth rimmed with jagged shards of broken corrugated tin. On the concrete floor inside, illuminated by the pale ambient glow of the highway lights, were fresh mud tracks.
Heavy boots.
And drag marks. Something heavy, encased in a nylon transport bag, had been pulled through the grime toward the lower fermenting vats.
I entered in complete silence, my boots finding the dry patches of concrete between puddles. The smell hit me immediately: rotting grain, stale rainwater, and the unmistakable, sharp chemical tang of aerosolized parathion.
Bug poison. High-concentration industrial agricultural spray.
A low, agonized sound vibrated through the floorboards thirty yards ahead.
A dog’s whimper.
I drew the 1911, thumbing the safety off with a muted *click*.
“Julian!” my voice cut through the cavernous space, hard as flint, bouncing off the steel fermentation tanks. “I’m here! Drop the nozzle!”
A laugh answered me—dry, wheezing, and laced with the manic confidence of a man who had spent three years calculating an execution.
“You’re late, Lucas,” Julian Vance’s voice drifted down from an overhead catwalk suspended fifteen feet above the concrete floor. “The Malinois has already absorbed sixty milliliters through his mucous membranes. His lungs are filling with fluid right now.”
I stepped into the center of the vat room, my weapon tracking upward.
High above, partially obscured by an iron railing, stood Julian Vance. He was thin, gaunt, his face hollowed out by prison and obsession, wearing an oil-stained Carhartt jacket and holding a commercial chemical wand connected to a tank strapped to his back.
On the concrete floor beneath the catwalk, locked inside a heavy steel dog crate meant for transport, lay Titan.
His muzzle was foaming with white, frothy saliva. His legs were paddling weakly against the wire mesh, his breathing coming in wet, rattling gasps that tore through my heart like barbed wire.
“Let him out, Julian,” I said, keeping the front sight post of my pistol centered on the shadow of his chest. “This is between you and me. He was following my commands. Your brother went down because he shot two civilians in a convenience store parking lot, not because of a dog.”
“My brother died alone in a ten-by-ten cell!” Julian screamed, the hysteria suddenly cracking his voice wide open. “He didn't get to see the sky! He didn't get to run in the park! And neither does your hero dog!”
Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black remote control with an extended antenna.
May you like
“Did you think I brought you here just to watch him die?” Julian smiled, his teeth yellow in the darkness. “I brought you here so you could die together. The crate is sitting on five pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. One click, Officer Vance. And the whole city gets to see what’s left of their favorite K9 team.”
***
