THE HIDDEN PARK SNARE

The Doctor?

The name ricocheted through my skull. Why would a crew hired for a dirty job refer to the man at Riverside park as “The Doctor”?

I looked past the phone at Marcus’s desk, trying to force sense from a nightmare. If Rodriguez was truly the leak inside the department, who was this separate contact?

My attention slid from the lit screen to a bulky manila packet half-hidden beneath a pile of fishing magazines. Gold embossing along its edge marked it as correspondence from an elite downtown Jacksonville firm.

I recognized that mark immediately. It belonged to the attorneys defending Marcus Vance.

My fingers shook when I pulled the packet from under the magazines.

The flap had already been opened. Inside was a clean stack of formal paperwork, squared and ready for someone to review.

The title across the first sheet hit me like a flashbang: an agreement retaining an expert witness.

Marcus Vance, Sr. was listed as the client. Sterling & Hayes LLP appeared beside the defense counsel line.

The assignment concerned Titan: supposed behavioral instability, a record of false alerts, and claims that he misdirected his handler aggressively.

I followed the page to the compensation section. The number was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Then I saw who had signed as the hired specialist.

Marcus Sullivan. Retired K9 Behavioral Specialist.

The cabin seemed to tip beneath my boots.

Marcus had not merely been my mentor. He was the high-priced dog behavior consultant Captain Miller had warned me Vance’s defense team had retained.

He knew Titan from the beginning. He could enter the precinct without raising alarms, reach police systems, and get into the evidence vault where the gloves had been stored.

Worse than that, he knew where I had taken shelter tonight. Nobody else outside this cabin had that exact information.

The gunmen had not located us with a tracker. Marcus had handed Vance’s people our position.

I turned slowly, every breath scraping against the crushing realization.

Marcus stood in the living-room doorway. His twelve-gauge was shouldered, its muzzle fixed squarely on my chest.

“You always had a talent for figuring things out too soon, Danny,” he said. His trigger finger settled tighter against the guard.

I faced the dark barrel, unable to reconcile it with the man who taught me how to read a working dog’s eyes, gait, and fear. The agreement lay on the desk under weak cabin light, screaming its price at me.

“It was you,” I said, raising my hands carefully. “Vance’s witness. You’re trying to bury the warehouse evidence.”

“I was paid to offer a professional assessment of a police K9,” Marcus replied. Nothing moved in his voice. “That is legal work. Retired handlers consult all the time. My pension does not cover much, and Vance’s attorneys offered serious money for a report saying Titan gave unreliable alerts.”

“You knew that report was a lie,” I said. My pulse hammered in my throat. “You trained Titan as a pup. You know his record is spotless.”

Marcus released a worn, bitter breath. “Naturally I knew. I told their lawyers Titan was exceptional, probably the finest tracking dog this state has produced. Then the judge ordered that live scent-verification demonstration before the jury.”

Everything clicked together, each answer making the betrayal uglier.

“If Titan passed in court, your opinion would collapse,” I said. Anger shook my voice. “No payment. No credibility. You had to keep him from reaching that courtroom.”

“This was never personal with Titan,” Marcus said, his eyes hardening. “He simply had to be removed from play.”

“You built an electrical ambush in a public park!” I shouted. Emily’s terrified face came back to me in sharp, brutal detail. “You were the man wearing that gray jacket. You used the frisbee to pull Emily toward it.”

“I knew Titan would stop her before she entered the water,” Marcus fired back, advancing one measured step. “He’s a Malinois. His reflexes are faster than hers, and I trained him to place himself between civilians and danger. The odds were calculated.”

“You gambled with a little girl’s life to protect a payment from a cartel boss,” I said, barely louder than a breath.

“I made the necessary move,” Marcus growled. “When the park setup failed, I knew you would eventually trace the gloves. Rodriguez became the distraction.”

He kept the shotgun steady as he explained it. Old access credentials still got him into the vault. He stole the gloves, marked them with inventory numbers, and planted them near the tree where I would find them.

“You were supposed to suspect the young, eager crime scene technician, not the retired mentor you trusted,” Marcus said. “I gave Vance’s men your location so it would resemble a cartel operation.”

His gaze never left mine. “All that was left was for you to die in the cabin fire, Danny.”