Chapter 1
I saw a man deliberately swerve his truck toward a dog standing in the road—and when I ran over to help, I noticed something around the injured dog’s neck that made the driver slam on his brakes.
It happened on a quiet road outside Nashville.
I was driving home from work when a brown dog suddenly appeared near the shoulder.
The dog wasn’t running into traffic.
It was standing there, barking desperately at passing cars.
Then a black pickup came speeding toward it.
I expected the driver to slow down.
Instead, he swerved.
“No!”
The truck struck the dog and kept going.
I pulled over immediately.
The dog was lying beside the road, breathing hard.
I knelt beside him.
“Easy, buddy. I’m going to help you.”
That was when I noticed a red collar buried beneath his dirty fur.
There was a small metal tag attached to it.
But it didn’t have a pet’s name.
It had a child’s name.
“LILY CARTER.”
Underneath was a phone number.
My stomach tightened.
I called it.
A woman answered almost immediately.
“Hello?”
“Ma’am, I found a dog wearing a collar with the name Lily Carter.”
The woman stopped breathing.
Then she screamed.
“Where are you?”
Before I could answer, the black pickup suddenly reversed down the road.
The same driver had come back.
He jumped out and shouted, “Get away from that dog!”
I stood between him and the animal.
“You hit him.”
“He ran in front of me.”
“That’s not what I saw.”
His eyes dropped to the collar in my hand.
His expression changed.
“Give me that.”
The woman on my phone heard him.
Then she whispered, “Is there a man there?”
“Yes.”
“What does he look like?”
I described him.
There was a long silence.
Then the woman began crying.
“That’s my ex-husband.”
The man stepped toward me.
“Hang up the phone.”
I backed away.
“Why?”
The injured dog suddenly forced himself to his feet.
He limped toward a ditch beside the road and started barking.
Again and again.
I followed him.
The driver shouted, “Don’t go down there!”
I looked into the ditch.
There was a little pink backpack lying in the mud.
The woman on the phone screamed when I described it.
May you like
“That belongs to my daughter.”
Then the dog began digging frantically beside a patch of tall grass.
