— “You had a motive, but now they have one too.”
Meanwhile, Rusty was at the county shelter. Jack Pearson had dropped him there, thinking he’d done his part. But Rusty wasn’t having it. He paced, he growled, and he nearly chewed through the chain-link gate. The shelter staff said they’d never seen a dog so determined to leave. They didn’t realize he was waiting for his partner.
The lab results came back two days later. The DNA found on Sarah’s clothing matched Blake Harris and a man named Charlie Gruber. Alex Miller was officially excluded as a suspect.
A week later, under the cover of night, Alex was transported to the federal building. He was still technically a prisoner, but the paperwork was being processed. In the prosecutor’s office, he watched the footage again. The shadows, the voices, Sarah’s struggle. The anger he’d been suppressing finally surfaced—not as a scream, but as a cold, hard resolve.
— “Did you get them?” he asked.
— “We got Harris,” the prosecutor said. “Found him at a motel near the border. Gruber is still running, but we’ll find him. The Supreme Court is vacating your sentence today. You’ll go back to the facility for processing, then you’re a free man.”
Alex nodded.
— “I want my dog back.”
Rusty was sitting by the window of his kennel when Alex walked in. The dog didn’t bark. He just stood up like a soldier reporting for duty. Alex knelt down, and the dog pressed his chest against him. For the first time, Alex closed his eyes and just felt the warmth of his friend’s breath.
But justice is a slow, messy process. The bikers hired expensive lawyers and claimed the evidence was planted. The media went wild. Alex’s name was back in the headlines, this time as the “Detective Saved by His Dog.” It sounded like a movie script, but for Alex, it was the life that had been stolen from him.
The final hearing lasted six hours. The judge reviewed the new evidence, and the prosecutor moved to dismiss all charges. The final words were: “Alex Miller is fully exonerated and free to go.”
He walked out the front doors of the courthouse. Rusty was waiting by the steps, no leash, no collar. They walked away together without looking back.
Freedom is a strange thing. You don’t notice it until it’s gone. Alex felt it on his first morning in a quiet motel room, listening to the hum of the fridge instead of a prison guard’s boots. He lay there in his own clothes, watching Rusty sleep on the floor. He didn’t know where to go. His friends were gone, his family had moved away, and his reputation was a mess.
His phone buzzed. A text from Green: “Gruber talked. He’s flipping on Harris. Extradition tomorrow. You want to be there?”
Alex didn’t reply. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted it to be over.
The next day, he drove to the courthouse anyway. Not to participate, but to see. A transport van arrived. A man with greasy hair and a wrinkled jacket stepped out. Charlie Gruber. The man who had laughed on the video.
Alex stood around the corner, out of sight. But Gruber looked his way. Their eyes met for a split second. In that moment, Alex saw real fear. The kind of fear that doesn’t show up in a courtroom. He knew that the man who killed Sarah would now live in the same shadow Alex had lived in.
The trial for Harris and Gruber lasted two weeks. The prosecutor called DNA experts and digital forensics teams. The defense tried to argue the SD card was a plant, but then they found a second video on Harris’s phone. He was bragging.
— “We buried that cop,” Harris had said on the recording. “Who’s gonna believe a convict?”
And then:
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