I closed my eyes briefly and locked the facts into place.

Federal wire fraud.

Identity theft.

Forgery.

And an active-duty officer.

Vance wasn’t simply a man with bad habits anymore.

He was a liability in uniform.

I documented everything.

Screenshots.

Transaction logs.

IP records.

Copies of the forged power of attorney.

Everything duplicated and organized.

Then I connected my portable printer.

The pages came out one by one.

$45,000.

Forged authorization.

A paper trail running through my mother and directly to my sister’s husband.

I aligned the pages and slid them into the tactical folder I normally used for deployment briefings.

Appropriate.

Upstairs, they still thought this was about a bedroom.

About me being difficult.

It wasn’t.

This was evidence.

And I knew where evidence belonged.

I packed the laptop and went upstairs.

Before reaching the top, I smelled barbecue.

Then came laughter and clinking glasses.

I opened the door.

They were hosting a party in my backyard.

String lights.

Folding tables.

A full barbecue spread.

Officers everywhere.

Captains.

A major I recognized.

Even a lieutenant colonel near the cooler.

I hadn’t been home twelve hours, and somehow I was the guest.

Evelyn moved through the crowd effortlessly, touching shoulders, smiling warmly, laughing at exactly the right moments.