Chapter 2 - Two Bullets and One Impossible Choice
I climbed into the back of the emergency vehicle with Leo before anyone could stop me.
“Jenkins,” Ramirez called after me, “you were involved in a shooting. You have to be checked.”
“Check me at the animal hospital.”
The doors shut.
Nobody argued after that.
Leo lay strapped to the stretcher with oxygen flowing near his muzzle. A veterinary emergency technician had met us on Mercer Avenue and was working beside the department medic, keeping pressure over both wounds.
Blood soaked through one pad.
She replaced it.
I watched every movement.
“What's your name?” I asked.
“Dr. Harper Nguyen.”
“You're a veterinarian?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you're doing.”
She glanced at me.
Most people probably didn't want explanations while someone they loved was bleeding.
I needed them.
“First wound appears to have entered through the lateral chest wall. Second is near the shoulder. His blood pressure is dropping.”
“Can you stop it?”
“We're trying.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“No,” she said gently. “Not here.”
Leo's eyes opened.
“Hey.”
I moved closer.
“I'm here.”
He looked at me.
I put my hand against his neck, carefully avoiding the equipment.
“Remember that ball Emily gave you?”
His ear moved.
“Yeah. That's waiting in the car. You don't get out of playing fetch tomorrow just because you decided to be a hero tonight.”
Dr. Nguyen kept working.
My voice shook.
“You hear me?”
Leo blinked once.
I don't know if he understood a word.
But I understood the promise I was making.
“You're coming home.”
The emergency animal hospital was twelve minutes away.
It felt like twelve hours.
When the doors opened, a surgical team was already waiting.
They rolled Leo through double doors.
I followed.
A woman in blue scrubs stepped in front of me.
“You need to wait here.”
“I'm his handler.”
“I understand.”
“You don't.”
“Officer—”
“He doesn't go anywhere alone.”
Her expression softened.
“I promise he won't be alone. But we need room to work.”
The doors closed.
For the first time in six years, Leo went somewhere dangerous without me.
I stood in the hallway staring at those doors.
My hands were covered in his blood.
Someone touched my shoulder.
Ramirez.
He'd followed us.
“You're bleeding.”
I looked down.
A piece of concrete had cut my forearm.
I hadn't noticed.
“I'm fine.”
“You need medical evaluation.”
“I'm fine.”
“Your wife knows?”
That stopped me.
“No.”
“Dispatch called the department liaison.”
“I'll call Claire.”
My hands shook when I took out my phone.
Three missed calls.
Claire.
I hit call.
She answered immediately.
“Daniel?”
That was my first name, and hearing it almost destroyed what little control I still had.
“I'm okay.”
Silence.
Then:
“Why would you start with that?”
“Claire—”
“What happened?”
“There was a shooting.”
Her breath caught.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Leo?”
I couldn't answer quickly enough.
She understood.
“Oh God.”
“He's in surgery.”
“How bad?”
“Two rounds.”
Claire started crying quietly.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
“I'm coming.”
“Emily?”
“My sister can stay with her.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Bring her.”
“Daniel—”
“Bring her. Leo's going to want his girl here.”
There was a pause.
“You really think—”
“He's going to make it.”
I wasn't telling Claire.
I was telling myself.
“He's going to make it.”
After the call, Ramirez handed me a cup of water.
I didn't drink.
“How planned was it?” I asked.
“Internal Affairs and Major Crimes are taking over.”
“I'm asking you.”
“They found two shooting positions.”
“Anything else?”
He hesitated.
“Ramirez.”
“The anonymous call came from a prepaid phone.”
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“It was activated this afternoon.”
My stomach tightened.
“The message?”
“The burner upstairs received three texts.”
“You showed me one.”
“The others were deleted. Tech may recover them.”
“Who sent the one about the K-9 unit?”
“Unknown number.”
I leaned back against the wall.
“Someone knew dispatch would assign me.”
“Maybe they knew a K-9 unit would respond.”
“There are four K-9 units.”
“You were closest.”
“Exactly.”
Ramirez studied me.
“You think this was about you.”
“I think Leo refused to enter that alley because he smelled people waiting for us.”
“That's not proof.”
“No.”
I looked at the blood on my hands.
“But this is.”
Claire arrived forty minutes later.
Emily was with her.
The moment my daughter saw the blood on my uniform, she stopped walking.
“Daddy?”
“I'm okay.”
She ran toward me.
I caught her with one arm.
Then she pulled away.
“Where's Leo?”
“In surgery.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not yet.”
Her face changed.
Children can understand death long before adults are ready to admit it.
“Is he going to die?”
Claire closed her eyes.
I crouched.
“No.”
It came out too quickly.
Emily stared at me.
“You promise?”
That word.
Promise.
Police officers should know better than to promise outcomes they can't control.
But I was her father.
And Leo was family.
“I promise we're going to do everything possible.”
She shook her head.
“That's not what I asked.”
My daughter had inherited Claire's ability to hear what I wasn't saying.
I pulled the old tennis ball from my pocket.
“I brought this.”
Emily took it.
“He needs it.”
“He will.”
She sat in a chair outside surgery with the ball held between both hands.
Two hours passed.
Then three.
Officers came and went.
Captain Morris arrived.
Chief Patterson came personally.
Nobody could tell me anything useful about the investigation.
At 2:31 a.m., a surgeon entered the hallway.
Dr. Rebecca Stanton.
There was blood on her scrub cap.
I stood.
“So?”
“Leo is alive.”
Claire covered her mouth.
Emily jumped from her chair.
I nearly fell against the wall from relief.
“But,” Dr. Stanton continued, “he's critical.”
Everything inside me tightened again.
“The first bullet passed through muscle and missed the spine by less than an inch. The second entered the chest.”
I stared at her.
“Heart?”
“No.”
“Lung?”
“It damaged the lower portion of the right lung and caused significant internal bleeding.”
“Can he recover?”
“We controlled the hemorrhage.”
“Can he recover?”
She paused.
“We don't know yet.”
Emily moved beside me.
“Can I see him?”
Dr. Stanton looked down.
“Just for a minute.”
Leo looked impossibly small surrounded by machines.
That sounds strange for an eighty-five-pound German Shepherd.
But when an animal you've always known as powerful is unconscious, tubes running around him, his entire presence changes.
Emily walked to the edge of the kennel.
She didn't touch him until Dr. Stanton nodded.
Then she placed the tennis ball beside his front paw.
“You forgot this,” she whispered.
Claire turned away.
I couldn't.
Leo's eyes remained closed.
Emily bent closer.
“You still have to come home.”
His paw moved.
Barely.
But it moved.
Emily gasped.
“Dad.”
“I saw.”
Dr. Stanton watched the monitor.
“Reflex.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I chose not to argue with hope.
At four in the morning, Captain Morris asked me to step into a private consultation room.
Detective Laura Bennett was waiting.
She worked Major Crimes.
I'd known Laura for eleven years.
Her expression told me this wasn't a social visit.
“Daniel,” she said, “we recovered something from the phone.”
Claire and Emily remained with Leo.
I closed the door.
“What?”
“The deleted texts.”
She placed printed screenshots on the table.
The first:
LIGHTS ON AT 22:30.
The second:
CALL IT IN AT 22:40. K9 SHOULD DRAW IT.
The third was the one I'd already seen:
THE K-9 UNIT IS ON THE WAY.
I stared.
“What does 'K9 should draw it' mean?”
“That's what we're trying to determine.”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“It means whoever planned the ambush expected a K-9 response.”
“Who knew I was working?”
“Your department.”
“That's hundreds of people.”
“Your schedule isn't public.”
I looked at her.
“Then start inside.”
Laura's expression tightened.
“We already are.”
That should have reassured me.
Instead, something colder settled inside my chest.
“What aren't you telling me?”
She didn't answer.
“Laura.”
“The prepaid phone that made the anonymous call didn't move around the city randomly.”
“What?”
“We pulled tower data.”
She slid another page toward me.
“The phone was activated at 3:17 yesterday afternoon.”
“Where?”
“Two blocks from police headquarters.”
I looked down at the map.
Then she pointed to another location.
“At 5:42, it connected to a tower near the employee parking structure.”
A long silence followed.
“You think a cop bought it?”
“I think we have to consider every possibility.”
“Who knew I'd be covering Mercer tonight?”
Laura met my eyes.
“That's the problem.”
“What problem?”
“You weren't originally assigned to that district.”
I knew that.
Officer Hayes had called out sick.
My supervisor moved me north for the first half of the night.
“A change was made at roll call.”
“Yes.”
“Who made it?”
Laura didn't answer.
She didn't have to.
Only one supervisor had authority over K-9 deployments on my shift.
Lieutenant Marcus Hale.
A man I'd worked beside for almost a decade.
A man who had eaten dinner at my house.
A man Emily called Uncle Marcus.
I stared at Laura.
“No.”
“We're not accusing anyone.”
“Hale changed my assignment.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn't mean—”
“I know.”
The door opened suddenly.
Dr. Stanton stood there.
My heart stopped.
“What happened?”
“You need to come.”
I ran.
Leo's monitor was sounding.
Three technicians surrounded him.
Emily was crying against Claire.
“What happened?”
Dr. Stanton pulled me back.
“His blood pressure dropped.”
“Why?”
“We may have missed ongoing internal bleeding.”
“Then operate.”
“We're preparing.”
“Do it.”
She looked at me.
“There is another complication.”
“What?”
“The second bullet fragmented.”
My mouth went dry.
“A piece is lodged close to a major vessel near his heart.”
“Remove it.”
“If we move it and the vessel tears, he could bleed out within seconds.”
“So leave it.”
“If we leave it and it shifts, the same thing can happen.”
For the first time that night, I couldn't find an order to give.
There was no command.
No training.
No correct procedure.
Just a choice between two ways I might lose my partner.
And while the surgical team rushed Leo back through those double doors, my phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a message appeared.
THE DOG WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TAKE BOTH.
I stared at the screen.
May you like
A second message arrived.
NEXT TIME, HE WON'T BE THERE.
