THE HIDDEN PARK SNARE

Marcus moved before I could shift my footing. He came out from behind the banyan roots, shouldered the twelve-gauge, and pulled the trigger.

The blast rolled across the black water and through the trees. The rifleman jerked backward as if the night itself had hit him, crashing into the mud while his suppressed weapon spun out of his grip.

The man with the fuel reacted fast. He abandoned the canister, threw himself behind the flaming wreckage of the cabin porch, and answered with gunfire. Rounds tore through standing water and snapped chunks from the roots near my boots.

“Titan, take the outside!” I shouted, pointing him toward the cabin’s right flank.

Titan gave me nothing but movement. He launched through the muck without a bark, a dark shape vanishing beyond the fire’s reach as he raced around the clearing.

I stepped into the open and fired my Glock toward the ruined porch. My shots kept the arsonist low and bought Titan the seconds he needed.

Firelight flickered over the wreckage. The arsonist rose just enough to aim his pistol at the flashes from my weapon.

He never noticed the shadow cutting in from his blind side.

Titan slammed into him with the force of a thrown engine block. His teeth locked onto the man’s gun arm, and the mercenary screamed as the pistol bucked once into the dirt.

Titan twisted, dragged him clear of the burning boards, and drove him face-first into the mud. The gun slid away while the man fought uselessly beneath my partner’s weight.

“Hold him!” I yelled, running hard across the exposed ground.

When I reached them, the mercenary was sobbing and clutching at his wrecked forearm. Titan stood over him with his jaws wet, a warning growl vibrating low enough to feel in my ribs.

His eyes found mine. He was waiting, controlled and ready, for whichever order came next.

“Out,” I said quietly.

Titan released the injured arm and eased back into a sit. He never looked away from the man’s face.

Marcus came up beside me, shotgun balanced across one shoulder. He glanced from our prisoner to the burning cabin shell and let out a weary breath.

“There goes my best fishing chair,” he said. “Let’s get this trash inside before somebody else finds us.”

Ten minutes later, Marcus’s main house had become a fortress. Boarded windows sealed out the night, and the heavy front door sat locked behind an iron deadbolt.

We secured the surviving mercenary to a heavy dining chair in the middle of the room. I wrapped his damaged arm in a compression bandage until the bleeding slowed; he would live, even if every breath seemed to hurt him.

He looked late thirties, with hard eyes and military tattoos climbing his neck. Pain had not softened him much, but fear was beginning to work its way through the cracks.

Titan sat close enough that the prisoner could have touched him with one foot. My partner remained absolutely silent, staring at him without blinking.

That silence was worse than barking. The man kept trying not to look at Titan’s teeth, and kept failing.

“Talk,” I said from beside the dining table. “You found my SUV at the park. Who gave you our location?”

He spat blood onto Marcus’s floorboards. “Go to hell, cop. You’re finished anyway. Vance’s people are shutting down every route out of this county. You’ll never get to that courthouse.”

The threat landed cold in my chest, but I did not give him the satisfaction of seeing it. “Marcus Vance can wait. I want the badge who sold me out.”

I moved closer. “Who supplied the high-voltage gloves from evidence? Who put the tracker on my vehicle?”

A crooked smile touched his mouth, then vanished when Titan shifted his weight. “You think contractors get names? We receive messages. That’s it.”

“Titan,” I said. “Watch him.”

Titan leaned forward until his nose touched the bloody fabric over the man’s knee. Then one deep bark burst from his chest, heavy enough to shake the chair.

The mercenary recoiled against the ropes. “All right! Get the dog away from me!” His tough-guy mask finally broke apart.

I left Titan where he was. “Tell me who.”

Sweat ran from the prisoner’s chin. “We didn’t install the tracker. Your own guy handled that. Young one. Crime scene tech.”

My lungs locked. “Rodriguez?”

“I don’t know his name,” he blurted. “Dark hair. Young guy in one of those white paper suits at the park. He told the boss when you left the playground. He gave us the glove serial so it would look like some old evidence theft. He also tracked your call to the retired swamp guy from a payphone.”

The room seemed to narrow around me as every detail snapped into place. Rodriguez had handled the yellow gloves, run their number, and pointed out the JPD-EV-4402 marking. Rodriguez had been right there whenever the trail needed shaping.

Rodriguez had betrayed me. And at my own request, he had kept the crucial evidence out of the system.