Chapter Four
Erin
The week goes by smoothly at the clinic and I embrace my new normal.
At first I was too tense, too afraid to screw things up.
I made a point of showing up early in the mornings, checking schedules and patient files, double-checking supplies like my life depended on it.
But I quickly realized that the clinic didn’t actually need me to run it.
Lily had already trained her staff well.
My role is more about support than leadership.
Still, I try to find ways to be useful. I fill in during appointments, lending a hand in surgery prep, helping soothe anxious patients.
Mira makes a point of including me in everything, and I am grateful for her kindness and efficiency.
The whole team has seemingly adopted me and their warmth makes me want to give the best of me.
Right now I am sitting in Lily’s office, browsing spreadsheets, making sure the budget is on track. Of course it is. I feel restless. What am I even doing here ?
A knock on the door interrupts my spiraling thoughts.
“Yes?” I straighten in my chair while the door opens a crack and Mira pokes her head in.
“Erin, can I come in?”
I nod, curious. Mira slips inside, glancing nervously over her shoulder. I frown. Something is off.
“I…need your hand with something. It’s urgent.” Her voice is hushed and filled with concern.
I stand up, senses on high alert. “Sure, what’s going on?”
She looks over her shoulder once again, and whispers, “You need to see this. But you’ll have to pretend you’re my tech.”
I nod, slip on a scrub top and follow her down the hall and into her exam room.
As soon as I walk in, the metallic smell of blood hits my nostrils.
Then I see the dog. A Rottweiler is lying on the exam table, barely breathing.
My breath hitches in my throat. The animal is covered in wounds, blood oozing out onto the stainless-steel table.
My throat constricts and I freeze. Mira steps up to the exam table and sends me a meaningful look.
“We will give her a shot of anesthetics for the pain, and antibiotics,” she starts, “then we will check how serious the wounds are and we will suture them.”
Her firm voice snaps me out of my horror-induced trance and I go to prepare the anesthetic and antibiotic shots.
When I move up closer, the wounds look even worse than from across the room.
Some of them are shallow, but most are deep, with blood still seeping out.
My eyes sting and I have to grit my teeth to hide my shock.
“What happened to her?” I lift my eyes to take in the owner. He is a large man with a heavy build. He is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. His eyes dart warily from Mira to me.
He shrugs. “Coyote attack.”
Coyote, my ass . I breathe around the tight knot in my chest. “Who usually treats her?” I press on. “Who’s her vet?”
His eyes narrow. “The usual place. Can’t say the name, Doc’s on holiday.”
Mira shoots me a subtle warning glance. S hit, right, I’m a vet tech .
I lower my eyes but I steal glances at the man, looking for distinctive details.
I make out a tattoo on his right forearm, a snarling dog head.
I commit it to memory for later, then try to clear my head and concentrate on the task at hand.
Mira and I tend to the dog’s wounds as best as we can. Her state is so serious that we might need to keep her overnight. But the owner keeps refusing, and unless we involve authorities, our hands are tied.
“We strongly recommend an overnight stay here.” Mira tries to reason with him. “She’s in no shape to move.”
“It’s my dog, we’re leaving. End of story,” he snarls. He hoists the dog up and puts her in a travel carrier. Then he is gone.
I sag into a nearby chair, trying to calm my breaths and get my dizziness under control.
“This is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, Erin.” Mira’s voice is tense. “We need to call the authorities.”
I look up at her. “Let me handle it. I swear, Mira, I will do everything in my power to have this man behind bars before the end of next week if he was the one who hurt her.”
I will make damn sure of that .
* * * *
After work, I pick up takeaway on my way back to The Atrium. My mind is whirling, already considering all the possibilities.
When I sit down cross-legged on the sofa and power up my laptop, my heartbeat is steady, my mind is focused. I am in control. This is my world—this is what I do best.
I had discreetly checked the Rottweiler for any microchip or tattoos, and unsurprisingly there was none. My fingers fly over the keys. First I check the identity the man gave at the reception. Rick Danger. I snort. Fake name, obviously.
Then I pull up the clinic’s security footage to see if I can get a clear shot of his face.
But no luck, he’d kept his head lowered as if to avoid being caught on camera.
Luckily, there are other ways to identify him.
I crop out a frame where his tattoo is visible and feed it into a tattoo recognition database.
There are thousands of results. That’s not good enough.
Then I hack into the other vet offices’ records, searching for any similar patterns—severely injured dogs without identification.
Two other clinics match—both treated unregistered, wounded attack dogs in the past month.
And both had alerted authorities. However, without any real name or address for the owners, the investigations ended before they even began.
I lean back on the couch, eyes flying over the city lights for several seconds. That’s what I suspected, it must be a dogfighting ring. Now I know where to look.
I return to the tattoo search and this time I sift through social network pictures and videos linked to underground dogfighting until I find it—the picture of the man with the tattoo.
He is proudly posing with two other men, each one holding up some kind of winner cup.
From there it is easy to follow the crumbs to his social media account.
Gotcha, Travis Hoyt.
I dig deeper, collecting everything I can about him—criminal record, bank accounts and transactions, connections.
Then I broaden my search to the whole network, names, evidence, pictures, transactions, dates, until I have a whole data package involving more than forty people in a larger-scale underground dogfight cartel.
The last part of my cleaning operation is the easiest—erase my fingerprints and send the FBI a nice little present they’ll find in the morning. With the evidence of fraud and the amount of money involved, I’m sure they won’t be overlooking this.
I lean back, breathing out slowly and steadily. That was easy .
If every takedown were this clean, I might sleep more than four hours a night.
The satisfaction slowly fades. My eyes drift to the encrypted folder on my desktop.
Manticore .
Every night after work, I comb through the underbelly of the cyber world, trying to find clues leading to them. However, every hint has led to a dead-end. They manage to cover their tracks with an efficiency even I have to respect.
Still, I keep digging.
Because someone has to.
One day, they will slip. And I’ll be right there to take them down.