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Highway 80 stretched across the Texas plains like a scar carved into the land, long, flat, and unforgiving. The asphalt shimmered under a dull, iron-colored sky, the kind that pressed down on you and made even open space feel claustrophobic. Deputy Ryan Miller had patrolled this stretch for years. To outsiders, it looked like nothing but empty road and scrub grass. To Miller, it was a corridor for predators.
In the back of his cruiser, secured behind a reinforced kennel gate, Duke shifted impatiently. The Belgian Malinois was all muscle and focus, seventy pounds of coiled intensity wrapped in dark fur. Duke hated idle time. Miller understood that restlessness well. In their line of work, boredom was rarely harmless. It was the quiet before something went wrong.
That mistake calcified inside Miller. It reshaped how he worked, how he watched, how he listened. He no longer saw traffic; he saw behavior. He read the sag of suspensions, the way a driver held their breath, the subtle stiffness that came from rehearsed calm. He trusted patterns, and he trusted Duke.
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