11: "I want a background check on Daphne Alistair."

Adrik's pov

The land survey lay open across my desk.

I had read it three times.

Several hundred acres on the edge of the city. Far enough from the main roads for privacy, close enough to reach. A natural water source. Solid ground. Woodland on three sides for cover.

An unusually good location.

I leaned back and studied the red markings.

I had found it by following a man named Bernard, who had stopped answering his phone three weeks ago. Before he went quiet, he'd made one call that didn't fit anything else in his records. It went to a private number. The number belonged to Ronald Alistair.

The land had come second. The purchase had been routed through one subsidiary, then another, then a third. Someone had gone to real trouble to bury the name at the bottom.

Alistair. Billionaire. Chairman of Alistair Holdings. No military ties, no government contracts.

A man like that had no reason to hide a purchase.

I turned a page. Generators. Industrial water filtration. Security equipment. A growing list of transactions that had nothing to do with property development.

A pressure formed behind my eyes.

The room dropped away.

Cold.

That was what I remembered first. The ground against my cheek, so cold my fingers wouldn't close. Blood in my mouth, thick and metallic. The sky above me, going soft at the edges.

I had tried to lift my head. To get my knees under me.

I couldn't.

A gunshot.

Then the cold was all there was.

My fingers had crushed the corner of the survey. I let go of it.

The office came back. The desk. The hum of the air conditioner. I looked down at my hand. It had curled into a fist.

I opened it.

I wasn't going to waste time on how I died. I already knew I had. That was enough.

Someone knocked.

"Come in."

Darian walked in with two cups of coffee. "You're still here? I thought you were off duty."

"I'm working."

"That's what I said." He set a cup beside my elbow and glanced at the papers. "More land?"

"Yes."

"Should I worry you're planning to buy the whole countryside?"

"No."

"Good. I don't think the budget could survive your enthusiasm." He dropped into the chair across from me without being asked. He always looked comfortable. "This is the Alistair property?"

"Yes."

"I heard his daughter's wedding fell apart."

"It did."

"The runaway bride." He shook his head, amused. "Must have been a rough morning for the groom."

"Not my concern."

"Naturally." He studied me a moment longer. "You've been here since dawn. Most people would have gone home."

"Most people aren't running this investigation."

"Most people also know how to sleep."

I gave him a look. He raised both hands.

"I'm going." He stopped at the desk. "Need anything? Food? Company?"

"No. And no."

He laughed. "There's the general I know."

The door closed behind him. I picked up the coffee. It was good. I hadn't thanked him.

I hadn't thanked anyone lately. A lieutenant had said good morning in the hall earlier, and I'd nodded. That was the most I'd given anyone in days. I trusted my men to carry out orders. I trusted a verified report. People were harder. People could change.

I had no intention of being careless a second time.

I pulled the folder toward me.

There was another matter I couldn't put down.

Daphne Alistair.

I had asked her a simple question at the mansion. *Have we met before?* She had answered with a smile that was almost perfect. *You were on television, General. Everyone knows your face.*

It was a good answer. It was too ready.

I knew how civilians looked at a man in uniform. Curiosity. Nerves. The occasional flash of admiration. She'd had none of those. When she first saw me outside the church, every drop of color had left her face. Her hands had gone rigid at her sides. For a second, she had looked at me as if I were something that shouldn't be standing.

Then she'd looked away.

I had dismissed it. People reacted strangely to authority. Today I couldn't make myself believe it.

Her file lay open to the first page. *Twenty-five. Only daughter. Privately educated. Recently engaged to Edward Blackwood, though the wedding was called off.* No criminal record. No security concerns. No connection to the military or the government.

A photograph was clipped to the corner. A recent event. An expensive dress, hair arranged around her shoulders, a polished face at ease in a world where money fixed things.

Sheltered. Privileged. Nothing about her suggested she was worth my time.

I looked at her eyes in the photograph anyway.

I had never met her. In the life I remembered, her name hadn't crossed my desk. I had no reason to know her, and she had no reason to fear me.

I was the only one who had come back. That was the working assumption. I had found no evidence of anyone else, and I had looked.

But assumptions had cost me before.

I picked up my phone and called the head of my private security detail.

"Sir?"

"I want a background check on Daphne Alistair."

A pause. "Is there a concern?"

"Nothing serious. Her movements, associates, recent activity. Keep it quiet."

"Understood."

"Her family isn't to know."

"Yes, sir."

I hung up. A precaution, nothing more. I disliked unanswered questions, especially the ones I couldn't explain.

My phone buzzed. The officer handling the property investigation had sent the latest financial records. I opened the attachment. Another payment, routed through an intermediary. A large sum, a vague description.

I checked the transaction date against the original purchase order.

Close. Too close to be chance.

Alistair was building something on that land. I meant to find out what.

That had nothing to do with his daughter.

I closed the file.

I had bigger problems. A country that didn't know what was coming. Research that had supposedly ended years ago. Records that vanished whenever anyone tried to follow the money. I had enough enemies without inventing new ones.

I looked at the photograph one more time.

She had looked at me like she'd seen a ghost. I had said so to her face, and she'd had an answer ready.

I wanted to know what she would do if I gave her no time to prepare one.

I slid the photograph back into the folder.

I would find a way to test her.