The snake’s rattle reached a fever pitch. It sounded like an angry hornet’s nest trapped inside a
tin can. Its head pulled back that final, critical millimeter.
It was going to strike. Right now.
“Get ready!” I yelled to the mother.
I took a deep breath of the freezing park air.
“NOW!”
Chapter 3
“NOW!” I roared.
Every single ounce of strength I had in my upper body went into my right arm.
I clamped my fingers around the rigid tactical handle on Titan’s ballistic harness and yanked
backward with explosive force. I didn’t care if it hurt him. I didn’t care if it bruised his ribs. I had
to move ninety pounds of pure, resisting muscle out of the immediate strike zone in a fraction
of a second.
Simultaneously, the mother moved.
Driven by the pure, unadulterated adrenaline of a parent trying to save their child, she grabbed
the thick collar of Emily’s pink winter jacket. She threw her entire body weight backward into the
frozen dirt, dragging the little girl violently across the grass.
It all happened in a microsecond. But in my mind, the world slowed down to a horrifying, frameby-frame crawl.
Titan didn’t want to retreat. His entire genetic makeup, thousands of hours of intense police
training, demanded that he lunge forward to eliminate the threat. As I pulled him back, his
heavy paws dug deep trenches into the frost-hardened earth, trying to hold his ground against
my pull.
That brief second of resistance almost cost him his life.The moment the space above Emily cleared, the massive timber rattlesnake launched itself.
It was a blur of mottled brown and gray. I didn’t even see the coil release. I just saw the violent,
snapping motion of the strike.
The snake’s jaws unhinged perfectly, opening to nearly a hundred and eighty degrees. The stark,
terrifying white interior of its mouth flashed in the dull afternoon light. Two massive, translucent
fangs hinged forward, dripping with pale yellow venom.
It aimed precisely for the spot where the little girl’s face had been resting against the dirt just a
heartbeat before.
But Emily wasn’t there anymoreInstead, the snake’s open jaws met the thick, reinforced nylon of Titan’s tactical vest.
Smack.
The sound of the impact was sickeningly loud. It sounded like a wet, heavy whip striking a
leather heavy bag.
The snake hit Titan’s shoulder area with such brutal force that it physically knocked the massive
dog off balance as I was dragging him backward.
“NO!” I screamed, the sound tearing out of my raw throat.
Titan let out a sharp, aggressive bark of shock and fury, his jaws snapping wildly at the empty air
where the snake had just been.
The momentum of pulling him, combined with his sudden shift in weight, sent us both tumbling
violently backward. My boots slipped on the icy grass. I went down hard on my back, the breath
rushing out of my lungs in a sharp whoosh.
Titan fell directly on top of my chest, a thrashing, ninety-pound mass of panicked muscle and
fur.
“Get him back! Get him back!” the crowd was screaming in absolute hysterics.
People were scattering in every direction. The mob that had just been ready to murder my dog
was now stampeding away from the tree line, shoving each other out of the way to escape the
unseen terror in the grass.