Leo dropped Barnaby the plush bear, his small arms wrapping instantly around the massive dog’s neck, his face burying into the golden fur:
“Good doggie…”
Leo wept: “Aunt Sarah, Mommy’s doggie came back for her!”
Vice Admiral David Mercer stepped to the foot of Rachel’s casket.
The seventy-four-year-old four-star Admiral snapped his polished leather bridge shoes together with an audible *CRACK* against the rug, turned forty-five degrees toward where I stood holding the encrypted phone, and brought his white-gloved right hand up to an unyielding, razor-sharp military salute:
“**Major on deck,**” Admiral Mercer boomed across the parlor.
His voice was sixty decibels of mountain quarry explosive, reverberating through the Asheville home like heavy naval artillery:
“Major Sarah Eleanor Mercer.”
“Director of Special Infrastructure Interdiction, United States Army Reserve.”
“Commander, Task Force Archangel.”
“The forty-eight-hour forensic surveillance audit is certified.”
“The seventy-billion-dollar Swiss attachment is executed in Zurich.”
“The sovereign perimeter of Valve Station Ten is secured under Title Fifty War Powers.”
“And Conduit Ten… holds true.”
Marcus Vance’s knees gave out entirely.
His six-foot frame collapsed flat onto the parlor floorboards, his hand slipping off his concealed pistol as the weapon skittered across the rug, his face turning the exact, mottled shade of curdled skim milk:
*k-k-k.*
His breath hitched in dry, spastic, uncoordinated convulsions:
“S-Sarah…?!
Major…?!
Two… two stars on the family charter…?!
But… but Rachel told me your family were just rural land appraisers!”
Admiral Mercer slowly turned his cold, flint-gray eyes downward toward where Marcus lay groveling on the floor.
He reached into his bridge coat, withdrawing an unsealed, red-labeled federal capias arrest warrant stamped with the raised gold seal of the **UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA**:
