Chapter 8 - The Threat from New York
Three days passed in a strange, tense quiet at the Milton estate.
Becca arrived late Tuesday night, pale, wide-eyed, and carrying three laptops in a military-grade duffel bag. Once she realized she wasn't being taken to a slaughterhouse, she set up an impromptu command center in the guest house living room, hooked her gear into Reed’s encrypted fiber line, and spent eighteen hours a day monitoring city dispatch channels.
Sloan spent every morning and afternoon in the garden with Mia and Goliath.
The transformation in the little girl was miraculous.
Mia was no longer the silent, ghost-like child who wandered through Serno’s dirty basement. She ran across the green lawn, her purple coat replaced by practical canvas jackets, her hands signing rapid, eager sentences to Sloan and the dog.
Look! Gray found a stick!
Can we teach him to jump?
Does Gray like apples?
Sloan taught her every command Neil Hartley had ever used—signs for find, heel, quiet, and guard.
Goliath bloomed under the attention. He was no longer the bruised, starved animal sitting in a rusted cage. His coat regained its silver sheen, his eyes brightened, and his deep, resonant bark echoed through the Milton hills whenever he played fetch with Mia and Leo.
On Thursday evening, the quiet shattered.
Sloan was sitting in the main library with Mia, showing her how to groom Goliath’s heavy coat with a soft bristle brush, when Reed walked in.
He wasn't wearing his coat. His tie was loosened, his sleeves rolled up, revealing thick forearms covered in faint white scars. Behind him walked Frank Novak, holding an encrypted satellite telephone.
"Mia," Reed said gently. "Go upstairs with Marie for a little while. Daddy needs to talk to Catherine... to Sloan."
Mia looked at Sloan, who gave her a reassuring nod and signed: Go on. We’ll finish the brush later.
Mia kissed Goliath’s ear, grabbed her small sweater, and ran up the grand staircase with her nanny.
As soon as the child was out of earshot, Reed turned to Sloan.
"Johnny Vance just crossed the state line from Rhode Island," Reed said, his voice dropping into a dangerous register.
Sloan stood up, setting the brush on the table. "Who is Johnny Vance?"
"The man who ran the fight ring down in Providence," Frank answered, his voice grim. "The guy who sold Goliath to Tommy Serno."
"Vance found out Serno sold the dog to me," Reed explained, stepping over to the fireplace. "Vance wanted that mastiff dead. He wasn't just a guard dog, Sloan. That dog was stolen from a raid on a corrupt state senator’s compound in Narragansett six months ago. Vance thinks the dog’s harness had something sewn into the leather."
Sloan felt a sudden, sharp coldness in her stomach.
"What?" she whispered.
"The harness," Reed repeated, looking at Goliath, who was lying peacefully by the fire. "When you found him in Serno’s basement, he was wearing a heavy, double-stitched leather working harness."
"I have that harness," Sloan said, her heart accelerating. "It’s sitting in the guest house closet. I took it off him the night we arrived because the metal buckle was rubbing his shoulder raw."
Reed glanced at Frank. "Fetch it."
Frank ran out of the room like a bull through a gate.
Two minutes later, Frank burst back into the library holding the heavy, dirt-stained black leather harness.
Sloan took it, her fingers immediately tracing the thick, reinforced seams along the back plate. She had trained working dogs for years—she knew what standard leatherwork felt like.
This wasn't standard.
The center spine of the harness was too rigid. It didn't flex like oil-tanned hide.
Sloan reached into her pocket, pulled out her folding utility knife, and sliced through the outer red nylon stitching.
The leather peeled back with a loud, tearing sound.
Inside a lined channel of oiled canvas lay three heavy, high-density flash drives sealed in waterproof plastic, alongside a small, black leather-bound ledger stamped with a gold seal.
Reed stepped closer, his breath catching in his throat.
"Jesus," Frank whispered, staring at the gold seal. "That’s the state treasurer’s mark."
Sloan handed the drive and the ledger to Reed.
Reed opened the small ledger. His eyes scanned the hand-written pages of numbers, bank account routing codes, and names that included half the city council, four state judges, and Johnny Vance’s entire distribution network across New England.
"That’s why Vance wanted him put down," Sloan realized, her voice shaking with revelation. "He didn't want the dog sold to anyone who might look closely at the gear. He was waiting for Serno to kill him so he could retrieve the harness from the carcass."
May you like
Reed closed the ledger with a heavy, definitive snap.
"Vance isn't coming to buy the dog back," Reed said coldly. "He’s coming with twenty men to burn this house down and take that drive."
