Another knock at the door—I seal my grip tighter around the pistol.
I haven’t slept all night, haven’t closed my eyes. Through the window I’ve watched darkness fade into a cold gray morning. I’ve listened to the quiet stillness surrounding me and felt the softness of the sheets beneath me, constantly repeating to myself it’s over. I don’t have to be afraid anymore.
Because I am here now, finally. I am safe.
Safe.
The word echoes inside my skull, ringing until I shake my head to make it stop. I remove the gun’s magazine, check the rounds, and then snap it back in.
There is another knock, two sequential taps, then the knob turns and she steps inside. I sit with my legs off the bed and wipe damp hair from my face.
My head is pounding. Lack of sleep and many hours of flying make it feel like a hammer is banging inside my forehead. It takes all my concentration to look at her, pretending I’ve just woken.
Walking toward me, she frowns. I wish she would stop staring at me this way, like I am a fragile glass object about to break at any moment. Because I’m not. Anything weaker than me would have already shattered.
It’s the same apprehensive way that colonel looked at me when he arrived fifty-two minutes after it happened, surrounded by four marines carrying M16s—locked, loaded, and aimed at me.
She sits down. “I see you’re not quite ready.” My mother starts to straighten the blanket, then, deciding otherwise, leaves it in a heap at the foot of the bed. “Your father will take you.”
I look down at the gun in my hand, acutely aware of the cold metal against my clammy skin. I know I’m no longer supposed to need it, yet my hand is clamped so tightly around the pistol grip my knuckles are white.
For the fifth time, I check to make sure a round is chambered and the magazine is full.
When I finish, my mother rests her warm hand on the back of mine.
Gently, she takes the pistol from me, checks the safety, and places it back under my pillow. “Leave it, Sophia.” She brushes my hair behind my shoulder. “You won’t need it here.”
CHAPTER 2
My mother cooks pancakes and bacon. “It’s what everyone eats for breakfast here,” she explains.
I’m not hungry; I can barely swallow the orange juice she sets in front of me. After shoving a piece of bacon in my mouth to satisfy her, I gather my things and follow my father out the front door.
A shiny SUV is in the driveway.
“From Andrews,” the man told us at the West Glacier Airport last night when he gave my father the keys.
I’ve never met Andrews. I only know he’s important—important enough to send my father all over the world. And to give us a silver all-terrain Denali.
Dropping my Swedish backpack at my feet in the passenger seat, I force my breathing to steady. Four minutes. Four minutes until this feels real, right?
I look out over the high-altitude valley. Perched deep in the mountains against a backdrop of wilderness and cedar-hemlock forest, this new town is quaint, charming even. Apart from the pickup trucks in every driveway, Waterford looks more like a Tyrolean village than how I’d imagined an American town in Montana would look.
My parents described it on the Black Hawk last night. You can enjoy your new life now, Sophia, they said, promising that Waterford would finally be home.
But as they said this, the soldiers on board watched me—stealing glances with their heads leaned back against the fuselage wall, their Kevlar helmets lodged between their boots. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t speak to us, couldn’t strike up a conversation to ease the boredom of the eleven-hour trip. We were cargo.
Now, I watch my father’s face while he drives—the soft lines around his hooded eyes, his permanently crooked nose, sun-damaged to a burnt-orange color. I lower my eyes to the Heckler & Koch holstered at his waist, to his left ankle where he straps a spare magazine, and then to his right ankle, where he keeps the Kabar he taught me to use when I was ten.
His eyes dart from the road to the mountainside to me and back again. He isn’t nervous, it’s simply how he drives—constantly assessing the vicinity as if we might need an escape route at any moment.
After two decades in the navy, his diplomatic duties have taken us around the world too many times to count. Of the last six