Chapter 2 Conrad
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 I failed to 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 he gave 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.
And Storm is with me, leaning in the shadows of the alcove by the bathrooms, watching me the way men watch bridges in high wind during a hurricane.
Like I might collapse at any moment under the strain of what’s being thrown at me.
I can’t stand the look on his face but I understand it. I’m a broken fucking man with a broken dog that I can’t do anything about.
I scrub a hand over my face, taste metal at the back of my throat, and stuff the urge to cry down deep where it belongs. I haven’t cried since I was a kid. I don’t intend to start now.
I need air.
“Call me the second he’s out of imaging,” I tell the vet. “And text me every result as you get them.”
“We will.”
A tech nods; she already has my number. Everyone here does because that’s the only thing I can control right now. The flow of information.
“Con—” Storm starts.
I hold up my hand, halting him when he would follow, and push through the glass doors of the entry, letting them bang closed behind me.
Night air off the river, damp and cool, does nothing to calm the fever racing through my veins.
I walk out into the parking lot, where the tungsten lights hum, and pull my phone out of my pocket.
I know it’s not going to do any good, but I open up my phone app, and like I’ve done twenty-eight times since midnight, thumb over to Phoenix’s name and call.
I listen to it ring. Once. Twice. Three times before it switches over to voicemail.
She doesn’t have the goddamn thing on her. Wherever she is.
I walk to the far end of the lot where the light doesn’t reach and make myself breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. Then I call again, wait for voicemail to connect, and this time I speak.
“Phoenix.” My voice is all gravel, and I take a second to clear it. “Princess, it’s me.”
I’m quiet a minute, waiting, like she’s going to answer. The words won’t fucking line up. I force myself to continue.
“Zeus is with me. He’s safe. I got him to a vet, and he’s getting the best care, and I’m not leaving him. I—” I stop. Try again. “You’re scaring the hell out of me, Phoenix. If you needed space, you just had to tell me. You don’t disappear. Not like this.”
I fall silent. Cars wash by on the road, a long hiss. I dig my fingers into my palm until it hurts. I know she didn’t just leave, know she didn’t need space. Somehow it feels better to say that, though, to leave that there like it’s a possibility.
It makes it feel like the other option isn’t quite as real.
I scrub my fingers across my forehead. “Damnit, Phoenix, we’re not doing this to each other again.”
More silence. It hums with expectation…or maybe it’s just pity. Nobody’s listening. Not Phoenix, not whoever took her, not God or whatever deity might bring her back to me.
“Just…call me. Whatever this is, I’ll fix it. I’ll get on a plane, a boat…I’ll fucking crawl if I have to. I don’t care what I said, what I didn’t say, whatever you think I meant. Just…come back to me. Please.”
The last word scrapes against something I don’t let anyone hear. I almost say I’m sorry. I almost say too much.
I stare at the red button, and then I hit delete. The message blinks out of existence like it never happened.
I text her because that’s safer.
Zeus is safe. Where are you?
The tiny delivered notification showing that she received my message never appears.
Behind me, the clinic doors swish open in the distance, but Storm doesn’t step outside. He lets me have the space between us. That’s good. I need to sort out the shape of the problem without anyone else’s voice getting in the way.
The phone pings a notification, and I jerk it up, only to feel the tension in my shoulders visibly deflate.
Not her.
Atticus: There are no badge pings on any exits. Camera 18B lost twenty-three minutes, though. Trying to work around it.
Maverick: Two housekeepers lied about their whereabouts. Pulling threads there. Could be nothing, could be everything. The chief of security sent me his logs when I asked. Danner—that cop? His name showed up on them.
Atticus: Well, that’s interesting.
Me: Follow that trail.
Danner. That’s definitely something. I roll my shoulders in an attempt to release the tension, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
The math is simple. She didn’t walk away from me—from us. Even if it looks like it. Someone took her from me; and they left Zeus behind, broken and bleeding.
I have to find her. I’ll burn every inch between here and there to get it done. There is no other alternative.
I pocket the phone and head back inside to sit with Zeus until the vet herself comes walking out a little while later.
“Zeus is a strong boy,” she says before I can manage to open my mouth. “You can sit with him if you want while we set the splint on his leg. He’s going to need surgery for the internal bleeding, but the specialist, Dr. Novak, is a few hours out.”
“Let’s go.” Storm is up and by my side as we follow her.
We walk back to the treatment area behind the vet. It’s a controlled mess—IV poles, a crash cart, a whiteboard with names and times.