Chapter 1
Thanksgiving arrived with freezing rain.
By 1:47 p.m., I was sitting in my car outside Mom’s house in Alexandria, staring at an email on my personal phone while rain ticked against the windshield.
My secure phone was locked in a government-approved case in the trunk.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t check it during dinner unless duty called.
That promise had already been broken twice.
At 12:16, one of my analysts had called about a reporting discrepancy.
At 1:03, my deputy sent an update requiring acknowledgment.
Nothing catastrophic.
Nothing that required me to leave.
Yet.
I looked at Mom’s house.
Through the front windows, I could see people moving around beneath the warm yellow lights.
Normal people.
Normal Thanksgiving.
Turkey.
Football.
Arguments about politics nobody understood.
For one afternoon, I wanted to be Tanya the daughter.
Not Tanya whose decisions could end up inside briefing books carried into rooms with no windows.
I grabbed the bottle of wine I had brought and went inside.
Mom nearly crushed me in the doorway.
“You made it!”
“I said I would try.”
“You always say you’ll try.”
“And sometimes I succeed.”
She kissed my cheek.
“You look tired.”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you too.”
Jason appeared behind her holding a beer.
“There she is. America’s favorite bureaucrat.”
I smiled.
“America has several hundred thousand bureaucrats. Competition is intense.”
He laughed and hugged me.
Then I heard the voice from the living room.
“Is that Tanya?”
Uncle Frank.
Of course.
He was seventy now, though retirement hadn’t softened him much.
He still wore his gray hair cropped short. His posture was military straight, and even in a sweater he somehow looked like he was about to inspect somebody.
He hugged me warmly.
“Still at the Pentagon?”
“Still working.”
“Good. Government pension will be nice someday.”
“Something to look forward to.”
He squeezed my shoulder.
“Smart girl.”
Girl.
I was forty-two.
I let it go.
Dinner began at 2:23.
For approximately seventeen minutes, we managed to discuss normal things.
Jason’s remodeling project.
Mom’s church fundraiser.
Tyler’s new consulting job.
My cousin Melissa’s engagement.
Then somebody mentioned a news report involving the Middle East.
I felt the conversation changing before it actually did.
Uncle Frank put down his fork.
“The problem,” he began, “is nobody understands operational patience anymore.”
Here we go.
Tyler leaned forward.
“What do you mean?”
Frank took a drink of wine.
“When I was in uniform, we understood that you don’t make strategic decisions based on a twenty-four-hour news cycle.”