MY DECORATED K9 PARTNER SUDDENLY PINNED A SCREAMING SEVEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL TO THE GROUND—AND THE ENTIRE PARK WANTED HIM SHOT. THEN I SAW WHAT WAS HIDING BENEATH THE LEAVES.

My mouth tasted like copper and wet earth.

I lay in the mud for several seconds, my head throbbing with a sickening pulse. Rain washed over my face, slowly clearing the haze from my eyes. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, groaning as pain radiated through my jaw.

The flashlight lay five feet away, its beam pointing uselessly into the brush. The person who had struck me was gone, and so was the stainless-steel crate latch and the plastic shipping tag. They had cleaned up the evidence while I was unconscious.

"Fool," I muttered to myself, dragging my body up against the trunk of the oak tree.

They had taken the latch, but in their hurry, the attacker had made a fatal mistake. They hadn't noticed that the plastic shipping tag had snapped in half when they picked it up. A small fragment—bearing the last four digits of the manifest serial number: 7890—was crushed into the mud directly beneath my boot.

I pinched the plastic fragment between my gloved fingers, slipping it securely into my zipped jacket pocket.

My phone vibrated violently in my pocket. I yanked it out, wiping rain off the screen. It was a text message from Dr. Lin:

Marcus, wakeup call. The antivenom stabilized Titan's heart, but the city attorney just signed the euthanasia order. Animal Control is moving him to the municipal shelter facility for destruction at 6:00 AM. You have three hours.

I checked my watch. 3:15 AM.

Ignoring the blinding headache tearing through my skull, I stumbled out of the dark woods toward my personal pickup truck parked three blocks away. My badge was gone, my gun was gone, and the police department was working against me. If I wanted to save my partner's life, I was going to have to break the law.

Twenty minutes later, I backed my Ford F-150 up to the rear loading dock of the Northwest Animal Trauma Center. The rain was coming down in sheets now.

I slipped through the back utility entrance using the keycard Dr. Lin had secretly left in the lockbox outside. The clinic corridors were quiet, lit only by dim green nightlights.

I reached Titan's recovery room and stepped inside. He was lying on a padded table, an IV tube taped to his front leg, a clear plastic cone around his neck. His eyes were half-open, clouded with heavy sedatives, but the moment I stepped into the room, his tail gave two slow, weak thuds against the metal table.

"Hey, buddy," I whispered, kneeling beside him and pressing my forehead gently against his broad snout. "I'm not letting them touch you."