Ares charged straight at me.

Behind the reinforced glass, someone cursed.

I didn’t move.

No raised hands.

No command.

No attempt to dominate him.

At the last second, Ares stopped less than a foot from my knees.

His body remained rigid.

His eyes locked onto mine.

Then he lowered his nose and smelled my left hand.

Shadow’s old identification tag was wrapped around my wrist beneath my sleeve.

Ares smelled it once.

Twice.

Then he sat down.

The entire observation room went silent.

Zeus approached next.

Slowly.

Carefully.

He circled behind me, testing whether I would turn.

I didn’t.

Then Thor stood.

That was when Colonel Hargrove moved closer to the glass.

Thor hadn’t voluntarily approached anyone since Marcus Dole died.

The dog walked toward me, stopped, and stared at my face.

I lowered myself onto one knee.

“I know,” I whispered.

Thor’s ears moved.

“I know what waiting feels like.”

He stepped forward and pressed his head against my chest.

Behind the glass, General Whitfield whispered something I couldn’t hear.

But Hargrove’s face had changed completely.

Not surprise.

Fear.

I rested one hand against Thor’s shoulder.

Then something strange happened.

The dog suddenly lifted his head.

He wasn’t looking at me anymore.

He was staring through the glass.

At Whitfield.

A low growl rolled from his chest.

Ares stood.

Zeus followed.

All three dogs turned toward the same man.

Deputy Director Cross leaned forward.

“What the hell?”

Whitfield stepped backward.

Hargrove immediately reached for the intercom.

“Mercer, remove yourself from the enclosure.”

I looked toward him.

“Why?”

“That’s an order.”

“You wanted to test their aggression.”

“The evaluation is over.”

“No.”

Hargrove’s jaw tightened.

“Captain.”

“I think the evaluation just started.”

Thor walked toward the glass.

His growl deepened.

Whitfield moved another step back.

That was when I noticed something attached beneath Thor’s collar.

A tiny strip of black plastic.

I had assumed it was part of the tracking equipment.

It wasn’t.

I reached carefully beneath the collar.

Thor remained perfectly still.

My fingers closed around a small waterproof capsule.

Cross saw it.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

Hargrove’s voice exploded through the speaker.

“Do not open it.”

Everyone looked at him.

Interesting.

I held the capsule up.

“How do you know it opens?”

Hargrove said nothing.

Cross slowly turned toward him.

“Colonel?”

Hargrove recovered quickly.

“It could contain hazardous material.”

“Inside a military working dog’s collar?”

I twisted the capsule.

Inside was a microSD card.

General Whitfield went completely pale.

And suddenly I knew.

Marcus Dole had hidden something before he died.

Something he trusted his dog to protect.

I stood.

“Ares. Zeus. Thor.”

All three looked at me.

“Stay.”

Then I walked out of the enclosure.

No one stopped me.

Cross took the card.

“We’ll have intelligence examine it.”

“No.”

He looked at me.

“No?”

“I want an independent machine.”

Hargrove scoffed.

“This is classified property.”

“So was Marcus Dole.”

That shut him up.

Twenty minutes later, Parker brought us an isolated laptop from the training office.

The card contained six files.

Five were encrypted.

One wasn’t.

A video.

The timestamp was three days before Marcus died.

Cross pressed play.

The image shook as if the camera had been hidden inside equipment.

Marcus appeared.

Alive.

Tired.

Angry.

My chest tightened.

He looked directly into the lens.

“If this recording is being watched, then something happened to me.”

Nobody in the room moved.

Marcus continued.

“My dogs are not unstable. They are not defective. If anyone writes that after I’m gone, they’re lying.”

Whitfield turned toward the door.

Parker quietly stepped in front of it.

Marcus’s voice continued from the laptop.

“I discovered training deployments were being manipulated.”

Cross frowned.

“What deployments?”

Marcus held up paperwork.

“Dogs and handlers are being sent into exercises based on false threat intelligence.”

My stomach twisted.

I had read the report on Marcus’s death.

A supposedly routine search mission had turned into an ambush.

Marcus had been blamed for advancing without proper authorization.

The official report claimed he ignored instructions.

Marcus looked exhausted.

“I didn’t ignore orders.”

Whitfield stopped breathing.

“I was given different orders.”

The video changed.

A photograph filled the screen.

A signed mission directive.

At the bottom was an authorization code.

Cross leaned closer.

Hargrove muttered, “That can be forged.”

Then Marcus said:

“The man approving these missions is protected. He knows exactly how to make every failure look like handler error.”

The camera shifted.

A name appeared on the document.

General Daniel Whitfield.

Nobody spoke.

Whitfield suddenly laughed.

“This proves nothing.”

I turned toward him.

“Then why are you afraid of three dogs?”

His face hardened.

“I am not afraid.”

Thor growled from the kennel corridor.

Whitfield flinched.

Cross noticed.

So did I.

Marcus continued:

“There’s one more person involved. Someone inside behavioral evaluation.”

Hargrove went still.

Marcus leaned toward the camera.

“If Evelyn Mercer ever sees this, tell her I’m sorry.”

My blood went cold.

Why was he saying my name?

I had never worked with Marcus Dole.

At least, I didn’t think I had.

Then Marcus held up a photograph.

My photograph.

Taken overseas.

Shadow beside me.

And standing in the background was Marcus.

I stared at the screen.

Cross looked at me.

“You knew him?”

“No.”

But even as I said it, an old memory surfaced.

A night in Afghanistan.

A damaged convoy.

A handler whose face I had never clearly seen.

Someone shouting my name as Shadow dragged me behind cover.

Marcus looked straight into the camera.

“Evelyn, Shadow didn’t die the way they told you.”

Every muscle in my body locked.

The room disappeared around me.

Marcus continued.

“The same people who killed me were involved that night.”

I stepped closer to the laptop.

“What?”

Then the video froze.

A password prompt appeared.

FILE 2 LOCKED

Beneath it was a security question.

What command did Shadow obey last?

I stopped breathing.

Only two people had ever known that answer.

Me.

And the man I had believed died beside my dog eight years earlier.

From behind me, Colonel Hargrove whispered:

“Don’t type it.”

I turned slowly.

He realized his mistake immediately.

Because nobody had told him what the password question said.