BREAKING: HIGH-RANKING MILITARY OPERATIVE LINKED TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CRISIS.
And directly beneath it—
A photo of me.
Not in uniform.
Not at the Pentagon.
At this barbecue.
Taken less than five minutes earlier.
Daniel cursed under his breath.
“That’s impossible.”
But it wasn’t impossible.
Someone nearby had leaked it in real time.
I slowly turned.
Every family member suddenly avoided eye contact.
Except Derek.
He looked terrified.
Too terrified.
And that’s when I noticed it.
His phone was missing.
“Where’s your phone?” I asked quietly.
His eyes widened.
“I—what?”
“Your phone, Derek.”
The deputy looked at him sharply now.
Derek backed away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Daniel moved instantly.
One second Derek stood near the picnic table. The next, Daniel had him pinned against the fence with military precision.
The entire family screamed.
“Federal investigation,” Daniel barked. “Nobody move.”
The deputy finally stepped in.
“What the hell is happening?”
Daniel pulled a second phone from Derek’s back pocket. A burner device.
Not local.
Not personal.
Operational.
My stomach dropped.
Daniel handed it to me.
I opened the messages.
And the world tilted sideways.
Because the outgoing thread contained photographs. Coordinates. Movement schedules.
Athena intel.
Classified material.
Derek had been feeding information to someone.
My cousin. The same man who spent years mocking me at family cookouts. The same idiot who barely passed community college.
No.
Not an idiot.
That had been the mistake.
I looked deeper into the messages.
Encrypted communications. Foreign routing. Payment transfers.
This wasn’t random.
Derek had been recruited.
The realization hit hard.
Someone had used my family to get close to me.
