My stepsister kicked me in the ribs so hard I could barely breathe, while my stepmother calmly said, “Break her arm too,” and my father just stood there and watched.

By 0500, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a thick, suffocating fog that blanketed Camp Lejeune. The sun rose as a sickly gray streak across the Atlantic horizon.

The base legal offices at Building 66 were fully illuminated. Every light in the Command Judge Advocate’s suite had been burning since 0300.

I sat in the conference room drinking black coffee that tasted like burnt battery acid. Captain Thomas Wright, a razor-sharp Marine JAG prosecutor with three tours in Iraq and a Harvard law degree, was pacing in front of a whiteboard covered in flowcharts, timelines, and legal statutes.

“Here’s where we stand,” Wright said, snapping his dry-erase marker against the board. “The civilian defense team has already arrived at the main gate. Three partners from Vance, Sterling & Croft. They’ve brought three separate state court injunctions claiming unlawful detention of civilian citizens by military authorities.”

“Tell them to pound sand,” Cole said from the corner, his arms crossed over his chest.

“We already did,” Wright replied with a cold grin. “Colonel Reynolds invoked jurisdictional supremacy under 10 U.S. Code § 802. Because the entry was facilitated by Staff Sergeant Alvarez—an active-duty service member using her operational authority—and because the targeted premises were federal housing, the entire incident falls under concurrent federal-military jurisdiction.”

He pulled a file from his briefcase and dropped it in front of me.

“We just got the preliminary report from the hospital,” Wright said. “Your father, Robert Vance.”

I looked down at the paper. “Did he die?”

“No,” Wright said. “But he knows he’s about to. Stage IV pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The oncologist at the Naval Hospital gives him less than twenty-one days before organ failure sets in. When our investigators told him that Elena had been apprehended and that the notebook had been recovered, he completely collapsed.”

“Has he spoken?”

“He wants a deal,” Wright said. “He’s terrified of dying in a federal penitentiary hospital in Butner. He wants to sign a sworn deposition naming Lenora as the mastermind behind Clara Vance’s death, the subsequent corporate embezzlement, and the contract payment made to Staff Sergeant Alvarez.”

“And what does he want in exchange?” I asked, my voice flat.

“He wants to see you,” Wright said softly. “He refuses to sign the military affidavit until you walk into that hospital room.”

I looked out the window. Down in the parking lot, two black Mercedes sedans with civilian plates were parked outside the visitor control gate. Lenora’s lawyers were out there, pacing in their three-thousand-dollar suits, waving their leather briefcases at the gate guards. The guards didn't even shift their weight. Their M4 carbines remained strapped across their chests at port arms.