— “Out in the yard. They brought him in a crate. You’ve got twenty minutes.”
He walked to the fenced-in exercise area used for K9 units. Rusty was sitting by the fence, perfectly still. When Alex approached, the dog stood up and, as if they hadn’t been apart for weeks, walked over and rested his heavy head on Alex’s knee.
Alex knelt down, burying his hands in the thick fur. This was the same dog he’d spent every evening with back when he had a future.
— “I’m sorry, buddy,” he whispered. “I couldn’t protect her.”
Rusty gave a short, sharp bark—the sound he made when he sensed something was wrong. Alex felt it, too. The dog knew something.
— “They got it wrong, Rusty. I didn’t do it.”
The dog’s ears perked up. His muscles tensed. A second later, Rusty spun around, facing the perimeter fence. Something in the distant brush caught his attention. A shadow, a movement. Rusty growled, a low vibration that Alex felt in his chest.
— “Hey!” Alex called out.
But the guard was already moving in.
— “Time’s up, Miller. Let’s go.”
Rusty didn’t budge. He stared toward the woods beyond the prison walls. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, he bolted. He squeezed through a gap in the chain-link fence—a gap no one realized was there—and vanished into the trees.
The guard cursed.
— “Damn it, the dog’s gone!”
For the first time in weeks, Alex smiled.
— “Let him go.”
That evening, a brief segment aired on the local news: “Former detective Alex Miller, convicted of murder, has been sentenced. The case is closed. Execution is scheduled within the month.”
The TV was switched off. Alex sat in the dark. But somewhere out there, in the deep woods, a dog was running. Rusty didn’t care about courtrooms or headlines. He knew his owner was innocent, and he was going to find the proof.
Prison life is a grind of predictable hours. But Rusty’s disappearance had rattled the staff. The guards joked that the dog would probably starve or get shot by a hunter. Alex said nothing. He had a feeling a different kind of game had just begun.
Four days later, Lt. Green from Internal Affairs knocked on the warden’s door. Green was the kind of guy who didn’t like loose ends.
— “We have a weird situation,” Green said. “That dog. Do you have the security footage of him leaving?”
— “Yeah, the yard cameras caught it.”
— “I need to see it.”
They sat in the surveillance room. On the grainy screen, Alex sat with Rusty, then the dog suddenly bolted. A second later, in the corner of the frame, a blur moved. A person? A shadow? It was hard to tell. Green rewound the tape.
— “See that?”
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