Eight days. Marcus's stomach dropped. "Is he still here?"
Linda's fingers paused on the keyboard. "I'll need to check with the kennel staff. Older large-breed dogs... we do our best, but space is limited, and thirteen is —"
"Please," Marcus said. "Just check."
She nodded and went through the door. Marcus waited. He looked at the flyers on the corkboard: missing cats, adoption events, a fundraiser for a new HVAC system. He looked at his hands. He looked at the framed photograph in his mind — the one still hanging on Jasmine's wall — and tried not to imagine what "they might have already put him" meant in a building like this.
Linda came back. Her face was harder to read than before. "He's still here," she said. "Kennel twelve. But I have to tell you — he's been marked for evaluation. Age, stress, some aggression toward other dogs since intake. Tomorrow's board reviews cases like his. I can't promise you anything beyond today."
Marcus closed his eyes once, briefly. When he opened them, something in his chest that had been locked since the apartment door slammed unlocked just enough to let him breathe. "I want him. Now. Whatever the fee is. Whatever the paperwork. He's mine."
"The surrender paperwork listed her as the owner of record for the purpose of intake," Linda said. "We'll need ID, and if there's any dispute —"