My plane landed after eighteen months overseas, but instead of my wife waiting with open arms, I found her collapsed barefoot in the snow outside my own house, shielding our six-month-old son with her freezing body. “Your parents said we weren’t family anymore,” she whispered through blue lips. In that instant, I stopped feeling like a soldier returning home and became a husband ready to reclaim everything they had stolen from us…

“The ‘girl’ is my wife,” I said. “And she’s worth more than all of you combined.”

The lead agent walked over. “Mr. Hale, we have enough. We’re taking them into custody. We’ll need you to come down to the field office tomorrow to give a formal statement, but for now… the house is yours. We’ve cleared the scene.”

As they led my father past me, he stopped. The guards tried to pull him along, but he dug his heels in.

“You’ll regret this, Ethan,” he whispered, his voice like dry leaves. “I have friends you don’t know about. I have people who still owe me.”

“I’m a ghost hunter, Richard,” I replied. “I’ve faced worse than your ‘friends’ in places you couldn’t find on a map. Don’t test me.”

Cliffhanger: As the FBI vehicles pulled away into the snowy night, Lena handed me a small, encrypted thumb drive they’d found in my father’s safe. “You might want to see this privately, Ethan. It’s not about the money. It’s about your deployment.”