Chapter 2
Hope.
What a fool’s game.
K9 officer Dante Mancuso stood in the doorway of the small apartment, wondering why on earth he felt the slightest twinge of hope that this time it might be different, this time they might actually find something. Anything. Trying to link the Teflon Twins, Evan and Noel Larson, to their multitude of crimes had so far been like trying to break Flash of sniffing.
As if the big dog had heard the thought, he looked up, leaned his head against Dante’s leg and gave him that mournful look out of the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. His heart and gut reacted for a moment before his brain kicked in to remind him he was being played.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dante muttered to the bloodhound.
With a long, pained sigh that matched the expression on his wrinkled face, the dog plopped down on the floor.
“You’ll get your turn when they’re done,” Dante told him. The black-and-tan dog gave him what in a person would be a distinct side-eye look. “What? You don’t like Mondays or you can’t sort out a few extra smells?”
With a distinct huff, the dog settled his head onto his front paws.
A man in uniform stepped through the door, pulling off his shoe covers and latex gloves. Al Collins was fairly new, a lateral transfer from down in Custer, still in training here, and Dante didn’t quite have his measure yet.
“I swear, Mancuso, you talk to that dog more than I talk to my human partner.”
“Human?” Dante shot a grinning glance at Collins’s training officer, Duke Carnahan, a large, muscled man with a forehead and brow line that looked a bit simian, and often served to fool people into thinking him stupid, when in fact he was one of the sharpest cops around. He was also one of Dante’s closest friends in the department.
“Keep it up, pretty boy, and I’ll have to rip your arm off,” Duke shot back.
Dante knew the man was joking, but Duke also looked quite capable of carrying out the threat. “Flash might not like that.”
The cop’s gaze shifted to the dog, who now looked half-asleep. “You trying
