“Classified? Claire?”
“She is Lieutenant Colonel Claire Bennett.”
Ryan stared as if the words made no sense.
“My wife is not military.”
“She has served this country for eleven years.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Many things seem impossible when you never bother to truly know the woman sleeping beside you.”
The sentence struck harder than any accusation.
Ryan thought of the nights Claire woke from nightmares and called it stress. The scars she never explained. The locked drawer in her office. The way she watched every exit in every restaurant.
He had dismissed it all.
He had called her sensitive.
He had called her dramatic.
He had never asked what she had survived.
Subject Identified
The woman in the suit handed Bennett another page.
“Sir,” she said softly, “you need to see the last section.”
Bennett read it, and his entire body went still.
Ryan felt dread crawl up his spine.
