Chapter 7 - SOMEONE WAS WATCHING
Animal control opened the package in the parking lot.
Inside was a juvenile rattlesnake.
Alive.
No return address.
No shipping documentation.
Nothing except a folded piece of paper.
Lieutenant Harris read it once.
Then handed it to me.
Four words.
SHOULD’VE LET THE DOG DIE.
I stared at the note.
“This wasn’t random.”
“No.”
“He knows Titan survived.”
“Yes.”
“He knows where we are.”
Harris looked around the parking lot.
“That’s what worries me.”
Hospital security locked the building down.
Officers checked every entrance.
Detectives reviewed camera footage.
At 1:07 p.m., a man wearing a delivery jacket had entered through the service entrance carrying the box.
Hat low.
Face mask.
Gloves.
He walked out thirty seconds later.
“Pike?” I asked.
“Build is similar.”
“Can we enhance his face?”
“Working on it.”
I looked through the window.
Titan had stopped barking.
He lay exhausted on his blanket.
Lucy’s bracelet was still attached to his vest.
Someone wanted my dog dead.
That made this personal.
Harris seemed to read my face.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn this into revenge.”
“I’m a cop.”
“You’re also a man whose partner nearly died.”
I looked at him.
“If Pike walks into this hospital, I’m arresting him.”
“Good.”
“And if he tries to hurt Titan?”
“Mercer.”
“I said I’m arresting him.”
Harris held my stare.
“Keep it that way.”
That evening, detectives got a hit.
A gas station camera had captured Pike’s SUV heading south.
Another camera caught it forty minutes later.
Then another.
His direction made no sense until Harris spread a map across the table.
“He’s circling back north.”
“Toward Seattle?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Harris pointed.
A red circle marked a location twelve miles from Centennial Park.
I recognized it.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
Rainier Elementary School.
Lucy’s school.
My pulse shot up.
“He knows who she is?”
“We don’t know.”
“How?”
“Her mother’s interview.”
The news had shown Lucy’s full name.
Her school had been mentioned in an older social media post.
I grabbed my jacket.
“Call the school.”
“We already did.”
“They’re locking down.”
“What about Pike?”
Harris pointed to a traffic camera.
His SUV had been photographed less than three miles away.
Then dispatch came over Harris’s radio.
“Units responding to Rainier Elementary, report of suspicious male near west fence carrying a gray plastic container.”
Harris looked at me.
My skin went cold.
Pike hadn’t been running from us.
May you like
He was coming back.
And this time, he was going after the child Titan had saved.
