Chapter 2 Conrad #2
They’ve settled Zeus into a run with a thick pad, a heated blanket, and a monitor clipped to the stainless frame. A tech threads an IV into his foreleg with a tender skill that makes me forgive the world and all its damage for five seconds. His ears twitch when I step in and kneel.
“Hey,” I say softly. “You did good, Zeus. That was some real king of the gods shit, trying to protect our girl.”
He licks my wrist once through the muzzle, apologetic as if to say he’s sorry he didn’t win the whole fight by himself.
His leg is wrapped in a temporary splint from hip to hock, layers of padded cotton and rigid board.
The angle is better than it was. The shaking eases when my hand settles on his neck. The monitor beeps along, steadying me.
Storm hovers outside the run, hands in his pockets, pretending to read the whiteboard. He’s not fooling anyone. His hands are shaking in those pockets. “He’s a tough bastard.”
“So’s she,” I say. “Well, not a bastard, but you know what I mean.”
He nods once. “I know. We’ll find her and bring her home to him.”
I slide my fingers under the strap of the muzzle, careful, give Zeus a little scratch where it can’t hurt him too much.
“Can you get someone to go to the hotel and bring me his things?” I ask Storm, eyes still on Zeus. “Phoenix kept a go-bag for him by the door—food, his favorite toy. The blue rope with the knots. And the leather harness. He’ll need the harness when we get to bring him home.”
“I’ll send the front desk manager on duty,” Storm says. “You’ll want to get him a shirt of hers, too.”
It’s not a question. He already knows the answer. “Yeah.”
He steps away, phone already pressed to his ear, but my attention is on Zeus’s breathing.
At some point, Storm disappears and returns with two bottles of water and a clean T-shirt. He drops both on the chair. I don’t say thanks, but he knows.
When I close my eyes, Phoenix is right there—the tilt of her mouth when she’s fighting not to smile, the way she says my name when she’s mad and it sounds better than a blessing from a saint.
I see her in the service corridor, jaw tight, the exact second she noticed the blind spot and told us about it, the way I nodded and then didn’t fix it fast enough.
I see her squatting next to Zeus with a bag of treats, teaching him to “touch” her palm and then “touch” Atticus’s because she wanted him to love all of us in the same measure.
I hear her tell me in that even voice, you don’t get to protect me and ignore me at the same time.
I hear myself promise I’ll do better. The promise tastes like a lie when I whisper it to the inside of my skull.
“Con.” Storm’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “Atticus needs five minutes.”
I look up. The world blinks into focus. “Put him on.”
He steps aside after handing me his phone. Atticus’s voice is all edges and focus through the speaker. “We’re close. Danner’s badge pinged three times near the river in the last week. Two of the pings match shifts that he was on for the department. One does not.”
“Where on the river?”
“Working it. I know the look you’re wearing even if I can’t see your face,” he adds, softer. “Keep breathing. We have the dog safe and taken care of. We will get her next.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I’m telling you the order of operations.” I can hear the shift in his voice. The astonishment that I’d even think he’d ask me to.
“Then keep moving.” The order is useless. Just like the response I know is coming.
“Always.”
He hangs up. The line clicks. Storm pockets the phone, watches me for the twitch that means I’m going to rip the IV out of the wall and go bury a cop. It doesn’t come. Not yet. I need a plan.
“Sit,” he says.
I sit.
Time crawls. The night secretary dims the lobby lights.
The cleaning crew wheels a mop bucket past and pretends we aren’t men who could buy this block and are instead men who might need a blanket.
Someone in the back laughs quietly at something on their phone.
A cat yowls once, offended by the universe.
At four-thirty, Zeus jerks in his sleep, a small rabbit kick that rattles the splint.
I’m on my feet before I think, hand on his neck, murmuring low until the tension drains out of him.
His ears tuck. He’s embarrassed to have needed me.
I know the feeling. Because right now I need him so much more than he needs me.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “We’ve got this, buddy. You just rest up, because she’s gonna need you when we get her back.”
The sky grays at the edges of the blinds. Dr. Shaw reappears with a clipboard and a reassuring nod. “Pre-op soon. Dr. Novak, the specialist, is on his way.”
“Good.”
She studies me. “You should step outside for five minutes and get fresh air.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like a man painting a wall with a toothbrush,” she says evenly. “Go breathe. He’ll be in the same place when you come back.”
I tip my head at Storm, who’s already moving to take my spot. Zeus lifts his eyes, sees the substitution, accepts it, and that makes it good enough for me.
Outside, the lot is empty except for three cars scattered like afterthoughts. I lean my shoulder to the brick and stare at nothing until my eyes stop trying to find her in every shadow.
I call her again because I can’t help it. Voicemail. I don’t talk this time. I can’t stand the sound of begging.
Instead, I call Maverick. He picks up on the second ring because he’s most likely buried under a pile of paperwork that he’s trying to use to save Phoenix.
“She’s out there,” I say.
“She is,” he answers. “So are we. I’ve got feelers everywhere. There’s nowhere they can hide her, Con.”
“I’m going to put a tracker in her when we get her back.”
A small hum of amusement. “I wouldn’t ask her permission for that, brother. She bites.”
“She can bite me for the rest of my life,” I say, and it’s the truest thing out of my mouth all night. “I just need her alive to do it.”
“We’ll keep her that way,” he says, and hangs up because he knows I don’t need comfort. I need movement.
When I go back in, they’re prepping Zeus—shaving a neat strip around the surgical site, smoothing the skin with antiseptic that stains orange, taping the cath line securely.
Dr. Novak sweeps in with coffee breath and calm eyes, shakes my hand.
He understands this is more than just a dog on the table in front of him.
“We’ll take good care of him,” he promises. “Go sit where you can’t see the clock, because otherwise this is going to be torture.”
I sit one chair farther away from the clock and watch it anyway.
The doors swing open. The gurney rolls by with Zeus like the king he is. I walk alongside him until the double doors to surgery make me stop. My hand stays on the frame a second too long because I have to feel the push and pull of my own bones just to hold myself together.
“Bring him back,” I tell them.
Bring her back.
“We will,” Dr. Novak says, and the doors whisper shut.
I sit, and Storm slides into the chair beside me. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t have to. The silence between us says the thing neither of us is going to risk right now.
We’ll hold this one line. Then the next. Then all of them.
When Zeus wakes up, he’s not going to be alone.
When Phoenix wakes up wherever she is, she’s going to feel a pull she can’t explain—four hands on a rope, hauling her back where she belongs.
For now, I’ll control what I can. Then I’ll set fire to everything I can’t, and rebuild the world around me from the ashes of what’s left.