The Mafia Boss Found a Poor Nurse Bound Inside a Warehouse—Then His Dog Did Something That Shocked the Whole City

"Drop." Julian's voice cracked through the earpiece.

Clara threw herself sideways into the freezing mud just as a high-caliber round tore through the air where her chest had been a millisecond before.

But the shot hadn't come from Marcus's men. It came from the tree line.

The man standing closest to Marcus’s right side abruptly lost the top half of his skull. The deafening boom of Julian’s sniper rifle echoed across the canyon a second later.

Panic erupted. Finch screamed, diving behind an SUV. Marcus's men fired blindly into the fog, chewing up the tree bark, but Julian was a ghost. Another massive boom. Another mercenary dropped.

"Spread out! Find him!" Marcus roared, drawing his own weapon.

Clara didn't wait. She scrambled on her hands and knees beneath the rusted underbelly of a massive log-loader. Bullets sparked against the iron tracks inches from her head.

Through the chaos, a massive shadow detached itself from the fog. Samson. The mastiff hit Finch's flank like a freight train. He grabbed a mercenary by the arm, dragging him screaming into the dark woods. The psychological terror of a silent, invisible beast picking them off in the mist shattered the mercenaries' discipline.

Clara crawled through the mud, aiming for the interior of the mill. If she could get inside the processing floor, the heavy machinery would provide absolute cover from the crossfire.

"I'm moving inside!" she yelled over the earpiece.

"Negative!" Julian barked back, the sound of his bolt-action cycling loudly in her ear. "They're funneling you! Stay outside!"

But it was too late. Clara scrambled up the wooden ramp and threw herself through the open doorway of the mill.

The moment she hit the floorboards, a hand grabbed her by the hair, violently jerking her upward. She gasped, dropping the flash drive.

Marcus slammed her against a rusted band-saw, pressing the barrel of his pistol hard under her chin.

"Julian!" Marcus screamed toward the open door, using Clara as a human shield. "I have her! Take another shot and I'll paint this saw with her brains!"

The gunfire outside ceased. The silence was absolute.