But for the first time since I’d started at Happy Tails Haven, Bear
wasn’t waiting for me. I stared at his empty kennel for a full minute before
blinking.
“Have you seen your neighbor , Mr. Woofkins?” I asked the husky
behind the next gate over. He wagged his tail in answer with both icy blue
eyes focused on me. If he knew , he certainly wasn’ t telling.
I frowned at the bowl of yogurty mush.
“Has anyone seen Bear recently?” I asked the row of dogs, earning a
dozen barks in answer. None were helpful. “Did a volunteer take him for a
walk?”
It wasn’t unheard of for volunteers to show up at the crack of dawn, but
Bear wasn’t usually a morning person—er , dog —and I struggled to ke ep
my panic in check. Had someone adopted him? Had I missed it?
Taking a de ep breath to quell my rising panic, I ran to all the other
rooms before checking the courtyard play area. When Bear was nowhere to
be found, I marched back to Emily in rec eption.
“Where’ s Bear?” I asked, setting his food bowl on the counter .
The brunette rec eptionist looked up from the brownie she was nibbling
on and brushed a crumb of f her chin. “He’ s not in his kennel?”
“No,” I said, trying not to freak out. “Was he adopted? Or did a dog
walker take him out?”
She flipped through the sign-out notebook in front of her. “No adoptions
so far today. Tasha is walking P epper and Biscuit now, but no one else
signed out any dogs.”
“Where could he be?” I rubbed a hand over my chest to calm my
thundering heart. “I checked everywhere!”
Emily rolled over to the computer on the other side of her desk and
clicked around. “I can access the back-door security footage from here.
Maybe he es caped?”
“Bear would never...” I trailed off as ice filled my veins. There was
another possibili ty—one I didn’t even want to contemplate. I darted around
the counter and leaned in next to her . “Play the footage.”
Turns out, overnight security footage is pretty boring. And Mr. Sanders
didn’t have the best quality surveillance system. But after a false alarm with
a raccoon and one terrifying second where I could swear I saw a ghost—I
saw intruders .
“There!” I stabbed a finger at the screen, making Emily jump. “Pause
it.”
She clicked the mouse, and we both leaned in. Three figures lurked in
the alley , dressed in dark clothes and ski masks.
Dread pooled in my stomach at the cans of spray paint they held. “It’s
them. The teenage thugs.”
“I thought they only vandalized the front of the building,” Emily said.
“So did I.”
She resumed the footage, and we both watched closely as the small
group of dark figures approached the back of the building. They spent a few
minutes sprayin g the brick wall—I cursed myself for not seeing it when I
checked outside for Bear—before approaching the back door. It was locked
overnight, but one of the figures swung a brick at the lock.
Emily and I both gasped as the lock clattered to the ground. I hadn’t
even noticed the broken lock in my panic earlier .
“They wouldn’ t dar e ,” I whispered, clutching the arm of Emily’s chair.
We both leaned even closer to the screen.
The boys disappeared inside the building, but Mr. Sanders didn’t have
indoor security cams for us to follow them with. Emily and I waited with
bated breath as she sped up the video, and five whole minutes passed on the
timestamp before the boys stumbled back out with a wiggling German
sh epherd between them.
Bear.
Muzzled, leashed, and probably terrified out of his mind—Bear was
being herded down the alley by these dog thieves.
My fingers itched to reach through the screen and grab him.
And in the silence of the rec eption area, I could almost hear the last bit
of my patience snap like a glow stick.
S a d i e
Sadie’s Guide to Hostage-T aking, T ip #3: Always have a plan. Multiple
plans, if you can. But in the event of an impr omptu hostage-taking,
improvisation is your friend.
The police were at the shelter within the hour, but they claimed there was
nothing they could do.
Again .
They advised us to put up missing dog signs, post online, and check
other shelters in the area. When Officer Jake Murdock offered to take me
out to dinner so we could discuss strategies to find Bear, I almost socked
him in his pretty little face. He spent more time flirting with me than he
ever did helping.
All I cared about was getting Bear back.
Luckily , I knew exactly who’d taken him, and they would pay .
The only problem was I had no idea how to find them.
Ke eping a skeleton staff on-site, the rest of the volunteers and I took to
the streets. We were each armed with a roll of tape and a stack of Missing
Dog flyers that showcased Bear’s adorable snout. Mr. Sanders assigned us
each different sections of the neighborhood, and I drove my car about ten
blocks away .
After hitting a few of the small shops, I marched up to my favorite ice
cream parlor. The Sprinkled Scoop’s familiar yellow door was heavy, and I