PART 1: THE GHOST IN THE GARDEN The summons didn’t arrive with a thunderclap. It arrived on a Tuesday, carried by a mailman named Steve who always gave my dog, Knox, a biscuit. It was a humid Virginia afternoon. The kind where the air feels like a wet wool blanket wrapped around your lungs….

PART 1: THE OUTSIDER The chandeliers in the ballroom of the Omni Homestead Resort were blinding. They dripped with crystal, catching the light and scattering it across the room in a way that made everything feel surreal, almost dreamlike. But this wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare wrapped in silk and tulle. I sat…

PART 1: THE STORM AND THE SHAME   The rain in Ridgefield, Kentucky, doesn’t wash things clean; it just makes the grit stick harder. My name is Clara James. For three years, I was a fixture at Billy’s Diner on Main Street. I was the one who knew how you took your coffee before you…

Part 1 The sun at Forward Operating Base Rhino wasn’t just hot; it was a physical weight. It pressed down on you until every metal surface became a burn hazard and the air over the gravel roads shimmered like a bad fever dream. The wind didn’t cool you down; it just sandblasted your skin with…

Part 1: The Erased and the Ghost The air in Bravo unit curdled the moment the flash drive slid into my palm. It was a simple, cold-metal pass-off in a crowded hallway, a brush of knuckles that lasted less than a second. Colonel Foster, a man who moved in the whitespace of regulations, didn’t even…

Part 1   I wake at six, whether midnight was kind or stingy. Forty years of bells and freshmen and chalk dust trained my body to rise before the sun and steal the quiet hour. Even five years into retirement, the clock inside me keeps good time. The Tri-Cities are still sleeping when I pad…