Reeve stood off to the side with his clipboard, jaw tight, silent now, because deadlines had a way of stripping commentary down to essentials.
Mara pulled a folding chair closer to the kennel and sat, humming again, not acknowledging the crowd that had gathered behind her, because attention was noise and noise was poison in moments like this.
Vandal paced once, then stopped at the front of the run, eyes fixed on her face, searching, and Mara felt the shift like a pressure change before a storm, because this was not obedience.
This was memory.
She stopped humming.
Softly, deliberately, she spoke the recall word she had found in the file, not as a command, not with authority, but exactly as it had been written, exactly as it had been meant for one dog and one handler and no one else.
Vandal froze.
For a fraction of a second, everyone expected violence.
Instead, his body sagged, not collapsing but releasing, as if something heavy he had been carrying alone had finally been set down, and the sound that came out of him was not a bark or a whine but grief finding air.
Mara did not move.
