I stepped off a classified military transport and made my way straight to the ICU, where my wife lay with twenty-seven broken b0nes and a fractured skull.

The floorboards in the kitchen below creaked once. Twice.

"Check the upstairs," a raspy male voice whispered from the bottom of the stairs. "The old lady said the safe has to be in the master closet. If Sinclair didn't show up at the house yet, we still have time to torch the whole place."

"What about that soldier boy?" a second voice answered. "Ward said he showed up at the hospital with heavy backup."

"Ward’s a coward. Sinclair’s one guy. He’s probably crying over his vegetable wife. Get the gas cans from the truck. We burn the place, the safe burns with it."

I stood perfectly still at the top of the stairwell, melting into the shadows beside an oak bookcase.

Heavy footfalls mounted the stairs. A man stepped onto the second-floor landing. He was thick-necked, wearing a black Carhartt jacket, work boots, and leather gloves, carrying a red five-gallon plastic fuel can in his left hand and a crowbar in his right.

He didn't see me until his boot touched the top step.

I stepped out of the dark.

Before he could drop the can, I stepped inside his reach, grabbed the throat of his jacket, and drove the butt of my combat knife hard into the bridge of his nose.

Bone cracked like dry pine.

He let out a strangled wheeze and dropped the crowbar. I grabbed his collar, spun him around, and threw him down the entire flight of stairs. He hit the landing below with a sickening thud, crashing into the second man who was just starting to climb up.

Both men tumbled into a tangled heap in the foyer.

I came down the stairs three steps at a time, landing beside the second man before he could draw the snub-nosed .38 revolver tucked into his waistband. I kicked his wrist, sending the gun skittering across the floor tiles, and drove my knee directly into his solar plexus.

The air blew out of his lungs in a ragged gasp.

I hauled the first man up by his hair, slamming his battered face against the hardwood wall. "Who sent you?"

Blood poured down his lips. "Screw you! You don't know who you’re messin' with—"

I twisted his right index finger backward until the joint snapped with a loud pop. He screamed, his legs kicking frantically against the floor.

"I asked a question," I said, my voice level and calm. "Who gave you the order to burn my home?"

"Brad! Brad Vance!" the second man wheezed from the floor, clutching his broken ribs. "Amanda’s husband! He paid us ten grand each to clear the house and burn it to the ground! He said the captain wouldn't be here!"

Brad Vance. Amanda’s husband. A high-ranking corporate vice president at Miller Aerospace and the nephew of County District Attorney Harold Vance.

"Where is Brad right now?" I asked, tightening my grip on the first man’s collar.

"At the country club! The Miller estate in North Buckhead! They’re having a charity gala tonight! The whole family is there!"

I dropped the man. He crumpled to the floor, groaning in agony.

I picked up the crowbar, smashed their cell phones into pieces on the kitchen island, and dragged both men out to the back porch. I used heavy-duty zip ties from my truck to bind their wrists and ankles to the heavy porch pillars, leaving them in the freezing rain.

Then I called Master Sergeant Cole.

"Cole."

"Go ahead, Captain."

"Send a two-man detachment to my residence. Two prisoners on the back porch. Hand them over to CID investigators, not county deputies. They were hired by Brad Vance to burn the house."

"Understood, sir. And Rosalie?"

"How is she?"

"Stable. Intracranial pressure held steady for the last hour. Higgins says she survived the critical window, but she’s still deep under the coma. Sir... Hannah Miller came back to the hospital twenty minutes ago."

My pulse jumped. "Where is she?"

"Sitting in the waiting room under guard. She’s alone. She’s terrified, Captain. She asked for you."

"Hold her there. I’m on my way."

I walked back inside, secured Rosalie’s flash drive inside my tactical chest rig, and walked out the door. The rain was turning to sleet, rattling against the metal roof of my truck like shrapnel.

The Miller family thought they were attending a gala tonight.

They thought money bought impunity. They thought beating my wife into a coma would wipe away the trail of blood they had left across the state of Georgia.