“What the fuck did you do to my dog?”
2
Conrad
Zeus won’t stop shaking.
They’ve got him on a gurney under bright lights, a muzzle on—not because he’s mean, but because pain can turn even the goodest boys into biters.
His back leg sits at a bad angle, wrong in a way I feel low in my stomach. It’s broken, and there’s nothing I can do about it except sit here and stew in the hate and shame I feel for how I let this happen.
If Zeus is hurt, what happened to Phoenix? Where is she? For a moment—just a second—an insidious voice whispers. It wouldn’t be the first time she ran.
I shake it off. That’s ridiculous. One, Phoenix wouldn’t have run. Not after everything we’ve…just not at all. Two, she definitely wouldn’t have left Zeus laying wounded in the hall.
No, something happened. Something’s wrong.
Fear and panic spin a sickening cocktail low in my gut. I swallow it back, determined to focus on what I can control here, now.
“Did you give him something for the pain?” I struggle to keep my voice from cracking because I’m a grown man, and men don’t cry when their woman is missing, and their woman’s dog is hurt.
The vet nods distractedly, murmuring something about “distal femur” and a “clean break,” tossing orders over her shoulder to her tech. “We need scans to check for internal damage, Jamie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My hands hover helplessly over him before I shove them into my pockets, and I take three paces back from the table. There’s blood dried in the fur at his ribs where something—a boot maybe—caught him. His eyes, even as they begin to droop from the effects of whatever the vet just injected him with, keep searching the door like he’s still working the job he was given.
Find her.
Guard her.
Don’t quit.
Such a good boy. Looking for his momma. Doing what I should have done in the first place. What Ifailedto do.
“Run full panels,” I tell the vet for what I think is probably the third time. “Do the X-rays. Ultrasound. Pain management now to keep him as comfortable as possible. If you need a surgeon, call one in. I’ll pay double if I have to. Triple. Whatever it takes.”
I can’t do anything else but issue useless demands and throw money at the problem. I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in all my life. Money is supposed to fix problems, damn it. Not fucking create them.
“We’re already doing all of that, Mr. Masterson. Why don’t you try to have a seat? I’ll call you when I know more.” The vet moves steadily without looking up at me, her hands sure. She doesn’t care one jot about me or who I am, and for maybe the first time in my life I’m okay with that lack of respect. Zeus is what matters right now. “He tried to fight something bigger than him, that’s for certain. Looks like he put up one hell of a fight, didn’t you, boy?”
She makes a cooing sound, and Zeus’s eyes slide closed. His ribcage rises and falls with a slow sigh as the medications take full effect.
I grunt, rocking back on my heels.
“Of course he did.” My words are only a fraction of a second after the vet’s, but they feel like I’m late. That I can’t catch up. “He’s the goodest boy. That’s what I hear Phoenix remind him every single day.”
The night secretary brings paperwork, and I scrawl my signature across the stack of forms without reading them. I authorize everything they put in front of me. If they offered a gold-plated, bedazzled cast, I’d take it. That dog will eat a four-course steak meal every day from now until he trots up to doggy heaven if I have anything to do with it.
He tried to protect the most important woman in my world. He’d have died trying. It doesn’t get more loyal than that.
We found him in the service corridor behind the banquet level—fluorescents flickering, a camera blind spot just like Phoenix warned us about. He was whimpering, saliva foaming at the corners of his mouth from exertion and pain. I’ll never forget the way his tail lifted in a weary half-salute. The low whine of pain hegave when Storm and I gathered him up will haunt me until we find Phoenix and put them back together.
Atticus went straight for the feeds, rewinding, stitching angles, searching. Maverick started pulling staff from the floor, one by one, into a quiet office with no windows.
Atticus is still at the hotel now, building out a timeline of what happened, when it happened, and how it even could fucking happen when Phoenix should have been safe with us.
Maverick’s still working the list—housekeeping, banquet staff, security floats, anyone who breathed near that hallway between just after eleven-thirty and before midnight.
