The Last Loyalty: A K9’s Search for Truth

Chapter 1: Four Days of Silence

They said the dog hadn’t eaten since it happened.

Four days.

Four days of pacing the precinct hallways with restless determination, whining at frequencies that cut through the hearts of veteran officers who had seen everything, refusing every outstretched hand that tried to guide him away from the front door where he maintained his vigil. Until this morning, when Captain Rodriguez finally made the decision that everyone knew was inevitable but no one wanted to voice.

“Let him ride in the patrol car one last time,” Rodriguez had said, his voice thick with the kind of emotion that thirty years of police work had taught him to suppress but never eliminate. “It’s the least we can do for both of them.”