Daniel checked his watch.
“We need to move soon, ma’am.”
“Move where?” my grandmother demanded.
I looked toward the black SUV parked beside the mailbox. Another vehicle had quietly pulled onto the road behind it. Then another.
Dark windows. Government plates.
The operation was escalating.
Which meant something had gone wrong.
Very wrong.
I felt it immediately.
Daniel noticed my expression.
“We intercepted chatter an hour ago,” he said carefully.
That got my attention.
“What kind of chatter?”
“Internal breach.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
The backyard vanished around me for a moment. The smoke. The heat. The music. All of it faded beneath one terrible possibility.
A breach meant names. Locations. Assets. Dead operatives.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“They may have compromised Athena.”
My blood went cold.
Athena.
The single most classified intelligence initiative operating under joint military command. The program I had spent seven years building. The program nobody in my family even knew existed.
My mother looked between us helplessly. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said quietly, “this barbecue just became a federal security problem.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Derek laughed again. But now it sounded desperate.
“This is insane,” he said loudly. “You expect us to believe she’s some secret general running black ops?”
I looked directly at him.
“You handcuffed a decorated combat commander in front of federal witnesses.”
His face twitched.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?”
Daniel reached into the folder again and removed a photograph. He handed it directly to Derek.
Derek stared at it.
The color vanished from his face.
Because the photograph showed me standing inside the White House Situation Room. Beside the Secretary of Defense. Beside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And beside the President of the United States.
