MY HUSBAND CHOSE HIS FAMILY AFTER THEY NEARLY KILLED OUR SON—THEN HE LEARNED HIS WIFE WAS A SECRET COLONEL

The basement holding cells beneath the Department of National Defence headquarters in Carling were not designed for comfort. They were sterile, soundproofed chambers of reinforced concrete, illuminated by flickering fluorescent tubes that hummed at a frequency designed to fray the nerves of anyone sitting within them for more than an hour.

The man sitting across the metal table from me was named Jean-Paul Rousseau. Former Canadian Special Operations Regiment, dishonorably discharged six years prior for smuggling munitions through the Port of Montreal.

His broken nose had been set by a military physician, and his wrists were clamped securely to the iron ring bolted into the center of the table.

"You're out of your jurisdiction, Colonel Bradley," Rousseau spat, a line of dried blood cracking along his split lip. "I'm a Canadian citizen on domestic soil. You can't hold me here. The RCMP has to process me."

I didn't sit down. I stood at the edge of the light, clad in my full operational dress uniform—the four gold bands of a Colonel gleaming on my cuffs, my chest bearing the ribbons of combat deployments Rousseau had only dreamed of surviving.

Beside me, Marcus opened a manila folder, tossing three high-resolution satellite photographs onto the metal surface.

"You aren't being held under the Criminal Code, Mr. Rousseau," I said, my voice as flat and lethal as a scalpel. "You are being detained under the National Defence Act, Section 247, as an unlawful combatant engaged in a coordinated proxy operation funded by a foreign-sanctioned financial entity. In thirty minutes, I can have you transferred to an airbase in Trenton, loaded onto a C-130, and delivered to a black-site holding bay in the Arctic Archipelago. You will not see a lawyer. You will not see the sun. You will simply cease to exist on any government database."

Rousseau’s smirk vanished. The arrogance that usually accompanied domestic mobsters melted into genuine dread as he looked into my eyes. He realized that the woman whose son he had attempted to photograph and stalk was not an aggrieved mother with a restraining order—she was an instrument of state authority with the power to erase him.

"I didn't know who the kid was," Rousseau whispered, his voice cracking. "I swear to God, we were just contracted for surveillance. Snatch-and-grab if the perimeter was soft, but the primary contract was tracking."

"Who signed the check?" I demanded.

"Not Brooke Whitaker," Rousseau blurted out, leaning as far back from the table as his chains allowed. "She doesn't have a dime left that isn't flagged by the feds. The money came from the Sterling Maritime holding company out of Halifax. Julianne Sterling."

"What was the objective?"

"A trade," Rousseau said, swallowing hard. "Julianne bought two bulk carriers from the Whitaker family’s international fleet during the initial bankruptcy auction three weeks ago. Hidden inside the ballast tanks of the *SS Laurentian* were five hundred kilograms of unregistered industrial-grade lithium and sixteen crates of classified dual-use guidance chips that Richard Whitaker smuggled out of Long Island before he fled."

Marcus sucked in a sharp breath. "The guidance systems stolen from the Raytheon subcontract in Bridgeport last year."

"The feds seized the ship at the dock in Quebec City yesterday morning," Rousseau continued desperately. "Julianne’s entire maritime empire is under federal investigation. She needed collateral. Brooke Whitaker told her from prison that Colonel Elena Bradley was the one orchestrating the cross-border strikes against the family. Brooke said... Brooke told her that if Julianne had the boy, Elena Bradley would order the federal inspectors to release the ship."

I felt a cold rage settle into the core of my stomach.

Brooke Whitaker was rotting in a prison cell, yet she still believed that human lives, that *my son’s life*, was nothing more than a bargaining chip to be leveraged in a corporate negotiation. She thought my love for my son was a weakness she could exploit to force treason upon an officer of the Crown.

"She underestimated you," Marcus said quietly.

"She underestimated what a mother will do to protect her child," I replied.

I leaned down, placing both hands flat on the metal table, bringing my face inches from Rousseau’s battered features. "You are going to make a phone call to Julianne Sterling’s terminal in Montreal. You are going to tell her that the surveillance was compromised, but that Nathan Whitaker has fled his apartment in terror, taking the boy to a private family lodge in the Gatineau Hills."