Chapter 1 - The Call
Colonel Sarah Vance stood in the tactical operations center in Stuttgart, Germany, her eyes fixed on the strategic maps spread across the table. Her dark green dress uniform, immaculately pressed and adorned with the medals of a twenty-year career, commanded respect. But the vibrating phone in her pocket shattered her focus.
It was a restricted number.
"Vance," she answered, her voice a clipped bark of authority.
"Colonel," a hesitant voice replied. It was her neighbor back in Virginia. "It’s about Lily. She’s gone, Sarah. State Child Services and some private medical firm came and took her. They said she was a danger to herself."
Sarah’s blood ran cold. Lily, her seventeen-year-old daughter, had been struggling with anxiety since Sarah’s last deployment, but she was receiving outpatient therapy. She was not a danger to herself.
"Who authorized this?" Sarah demanded, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the phone.
May you like
"A woman named Victoria Sterling. She runs the new behavioral health initiative in the county. Sarah, it didn't look right. Lily was screaming."
Within the hour, Sarah was on a military transport heading back to the States. She was a master strategist, a woman who had navigated hostile territories and dismantled insurgencies. If someone had taken her daughter under false pretenses, they were about to learn they had provoked the wrong soldier.
