Chapter 4 - THE RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK"He's dying," Mia sobbed, dropping to her knees beside the old dog and pulling his heavy head onto her lap. "Cooper, wake up. Please, wake up! We have Rosie! Look, we have Rosie!"
She held out the ragged blue doll. Even in his semi-conscious state, Cooper’s tail gave a pathetic, microscopic twitch. His cloudy brown eyes fluttered open, and with a superhuman burst of dying adrenaline, he weakly nudged his nose against the doll, ensuring it was still safe in her hands.
"We need a vet, and we need one right now," Daniel said, his mind racing through emergency contacts. Cumberland’s local vet was thirty miles away, and the phone lines in the shelter had just gone completely dead—Vance’s team had cut the landlines from the outside box.
Suddenly, the headlights of an unmarked black SUV swept across the frosted windows of the quarantine ward. Car doors slammed shut. Heavy boots crunched on the gravel outside.
"They're here," Daniel whispered, grabbing a heavy metal oxygen tank from the corner. "Mia, listen to me. Take Cooper’s collar off. Take the doll. There's a drainage tunnel behind the washroom that leads out to the creek bed. Go!"
"I'm not leaving you!" Mia screamed, tears streaming down her face as she tried to lift Cooper's dead weight. "I can't carry him by myself!"
"You won't have to," a gruff voice echoed from the doorway.
Daniel and Mia whipped around, terrified. Standing in the doorway was old Sheriff Miller—Daniel’s uncle, who had retired from the county force two years ago. In his hands, he held a vintage Remington shotgun, and his face was set in a grim, dangerous line.
"Uncle Tom?" Daniel breathed. "What are you doing here?"
"I heard the radio chatter on my police scanner," the old sheriff growled, stepping into the room and holstering his gun with practiced ease. He immediately knelt beside Cooper, pulled a small medical kit from his belt, and injected a clear antidote vial directly into the dog's jugular vein. "Agent Vance isn't with the Department of Agriculture, kids. I ran his badge number through a secure state trooper database ten minutes ago. Vance is a disgraced corporate fixer working for a multi-million-dollar real estate developer in Nashville—the exact developer who bought up the Harrison family's land right after the tornado."
Mia’s eyes widened. "The developer... the man who wanted to bulldoze our farm for a luxury resort?"
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"The very same," Sheriff Miller said grimly, watching as Cooper’s breathing suddenly deepened and stabilized. The poison was reversing. "That tornado wasn't just a natural disaster, kid. The reports were doctored. The local land deeds were forged on the exact night your house was destroyed. And Cooper... Cooper didn't just run away. He stayed behind on the property and caught three men setting the illegal accelerants to burn down what the wind missed. They tried to kill the dog, threw him in a truck, but he chewed through his ropes, grabbed your doll out of the ruins, and escaped into the hills."
Sheriff Miller racked the slide of his shotgun, a fierce grin crossing his weathered face. "And now, those bastards realize that the old dog survived—and he's carrying the physical proof of their land fraud stitched right inside that toy."
