Chapter 4 - The Name Isabella Left Behind
Roman read the message over my shoulder.
His expression did not change.
That was becoming more alarming than when it did.
"Give me the phone."
"No."
"Claire."
"You have a serious problem with that word."
"What word?"
"No."
Mason coughed into his fist.
Roman ignored him.
"I need the number."
"You can have the number."
I took a screenshot and sent it to Mason.
"You cannot have my phone."
Roman stared at me.
"You think I'm going to search your messages?"
"I think I met you an hour ago."
"Fair."
Again, that word.
Again, the infuriating reasonableness when I expected pressure.
Mason began tracing the number.
I looked at Titan.
"When did Isabella die?"
Roman's eyes went colder.
"Five years ago."
"How?"
"Car accident."
"And your brother?"
"Six years ago."
"How?"
"Pier collapse."
I stared at him.
"Your brother died at a pier?"
"Pier Nineteen."
Lucian's words came back instantly.
Ask your brother.
I felt the skin on my arms tighten.
"You didn't think to mention that when Lucian brought him up?"
"I was distracted by the part where a man I trusted for nine years pressed a button that made my dog collapse."
That shut me up.
Roman glanced at the old photograph again.
"Tell me about Isabella."
"I barely knew her."
"Tell me anyway."
I set the frame on the counter.
"She came to the rescue in January."
"Seven years ago."
"She said she wanted a large dog but didn't want a puppy bred for looks or status."
"That sounds like her."
"She spent most of the morning ignoring the dogs that were trying to impress her."
Roman's mouth shifted faintly.
"That also sounds like her."
"Ash stayed under the bench."
"Titan."
"He was Ash then."
Roman glanced down at him.
"Apparently he had an entire life before me."
"Most dogs do."
I looked at the photograph.
"Your sister sat on the floor for two hours before he came out."
"She didn't touch him first."
"She waited until he touched her."
Roman's face softened for the first time.
It lasted less than a second.
"That was Isabella."
"She adopted him?"
"Yes."
"Then how did you end up with him?"
Roman looked toward the rain-black windows.
"He was in the car when she died."
My breath caught.
"Titan survived?"
"Barely."
"After that, he wouldn't leave my house."
"He slept outside my bedroom door for three months."
"Eventually I stopped pretending he was temporary."
I crouched and ran my fingers down Titan's neck.
The white crescent was still there beneath the harness.
I had touched it hundreds of times when he was small.
A strange ache settled behind my breastbone.
"He remembered me."
Roman looked at me.
"After seven years?"
"Maybe scent."
"Maybe voice."
"Maybe the way I handled him."
"Dogs remember safety in ways people underestimate."
Titan leaned into my hand.
Roman's gaze dropped to the dog.
"That's why he chose you."
"Partly."
"What's the other part?"
I looked at the torn harness.
"He was desperate."
The answer sat between us.
Mason returned from the office.
"Number is a burner."
"Last tower ping?" Roman asked.
"Within half a mile."
"Now?"
"Off."
Roman nodded.
"Get Claire out of here."
I stood.
"I'm still in the room."
"Someone knows your name."
"The sign outside says Bennett."
"They know more than your name."
He pointed to the text.
"Now Roman knows where you are."
"That implies they expected me not to know where you were."
I stared at him.
"Which means the dog wasn't supposed to end up here."
Roman's eyes narrowed.
"Or he was, and they didn't expect me to follow."
"Why wouldn't you follow your own dog?"
"Because Titan was supposed to be transferred to my country property tonight."
"I wasn't supposed to be in Boston."
Mason's face changed.
"Sir."
Roman looked at him.
"The car to the airport."
"Yes."
Mason swore softly.
I looked between them.
"What?"
Roman answered.
"I was scheduled to fly to New York at eight thirty."
"The flight was canceled at seven fifty because of weather."
"If it hadn't been canceled, Lucian would have been overseeing Titan's transfer without me anywhere near it."
I looked at the receiver that the police had taken.
"So tonight wasn't about the dog escaping."
"No."
"The escape ruined something."
"Yes."
"And Titan ran three blocks to the one place where someone from his past happened to be."
Roman looked at the photo of Isabella.
"Maybe not happened."
I felt cold.
"You think Isabella sent him here somehow?"
"Isabella has been dead five years."
"Then who knew I had cared for him?"
Roman did not answer.
I did.
"The rescue."
I went to the office and opened an old cloud storage folder.
South Boston Animal Recovery had closed four years ago after funding problems.
Before it closed, the staff had digitized adoption records.
I still had access to an archive because I had helped migrate the files.
I searched ASH.
One record appeared.
INTAKE 14-771.
Male.
Black Cane Corso mix.
Approximate age eleven weeks.
Foster assigned: Claire Bennett.
Adopter: Isabella Vale.
I frowned.
"Vale?"
Roman stood behind me.
"Our mother's maiden name."
"She used it when she wanted privacy."
I opened the adoption attachment.
Most of it was routine.
Vaccines.
Microchip.
Behavior notes.
Then I saw a scanned handwritten page labeled RETURN INSTRUCTIONS.
My own handwriting covered the top half.
At the bottom was a second note in blue ink.
I zoomed in.
If anything ever happens to me, contact Claire Bennett before anyone from Calder Security.
My mouth went dry.
Roman leaned closer.
"What?"
I pointed.
He read it once.
Then again.
His face hardened.
"I never saw this."
"Neither did I."
"She wrote your name."
"Apparently."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
I scrolled farther.
Another file had been uploaded the same day.
It was encrypted.
Filename: ASH_BACKUP.
Mason came closer.
"Can you open it?"
"Not without a password."
Roman looked at me.
"What would Isabella use?"
"I knew her for two hours."
"You knew the dog."
I stared at the file.
Then at Titan.
Ash.
I typed the intake number.
14771.
Wrong password.
I typed TITAN.
Wrong.
I typed ASH.
Wrong.
Roman said,
"Try your name."
I did.
Wrong.
Titan nudged my elbow.
I looked at the white crescent under his throat.
A memory surfaced.
When he was a puppy, I had called that mark his little moon.
Isabella had laughed.
"Moon?"
She had repeated it.
"That's better than Ash."
I typed MOON.
The file opened.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Pier Nineteen at night.
A man stood beside a black SUV near the water.
The image was grainy, but Roman reacted instantly.
"That's my brother."
I looked at him.
"You said he died there."
"He did."
I zoomed in until the pixels broke apart.
A second vehicle sat behind Gabriel's SUV.
Only the front edge was visible.
Black paint.
Chrome wheel.
Part of a license plate.
Mason leaned toward the monitor.
"Can you sharpen that?"
"Not enough to create information that isn't there."
I adjusted the contrast anyway.
Two plate characters became visible.
D7.
Roman stared at them.
"Damian used D-series fleet plates then."
"Could be coincidence," I said.
"Could be."
He did not sound like he believed it.
I opened the archive directory again.
The encrypted photo had a creation date several weeks earlier than its upload date.
Isabella had held it before hiding it in the rescue system.
"She didn't upload this the night she took it."
Roman looked at the dates.
"She waited twenty-six days."
"Maybe she was deciding where to hide it."
"Or checking whether someone was watching her."
Mason scrolled through the upload history.
"The file came from a public network."
"Library branch in Cambridge."
Roman's mouth tightened.
"She never used public computers."
"Maybe by then she did."
I searched the rest of the archive for the same upload session.
Three ordinary vaccine documents had been added within the same minute.
Then one deleted file entry appeared.
No filename.
No content.
Only a hash and a timestamp.
"Something else was here," I said.
Roman leaned closer.
"Can you recover it?"
"Not from this interface."
"The rescue's old server might still have a version."
"Where is it?"
"When the rescue closed, equipment went to storage."
"I don't know where."
Roman looked at Mason.
Mason was already searching.
I almost told him to stop.
Then I remembered the text waiting somewhere outside the store, the fake landlord, the fake contractor, and the dog whose body had been turned into a secret.
"Fine," I said.
"Find it."
Mason gave me a faint smile.
"Welcome to the team."
"There is no team."
Roman looked at him.
"She means that."
"Good," Mason said.
"We need someone who means things."
Roman gave him a look.
The moment of dry humor vanished when Titan lifted his head sharply.
He stared toward the front window.
A car rolled slowly past the store.
Gray sedan.
No front plate.
Mason moved toward the glass.
The sedan accelerated before he reached it.
Roman watched the taillights disappear into the rain.
"They're still watching."
My phone vibrated almost immediately.
Roman pointed to the timestamp in the corner.
His voice became almost inaudible.
May you like
"This photo was taken three days after his funeral."
