Everyone laughed when they sent an eighty-year-old man and his eighteen-year-old wife off to spend their wedding night together. “Let’s see if Grandpa can make it until morning,” one relative joked through a burst of laughter. He didn’t respond. He simply picked up his old briefcase and closed the door. When six relatives opened it the next morning, they stopped laughing when they discovered what he had been protecting all night.

“This is supposed to be a normal life, not a high-stakes military operation,” Chloe said.

Walter looked at her with deep fatherly tenderness.

“It may not be a military operation for you, but it certainly is for me,” Walter said softly.

“I promised your father that you would make it safely to the other side of this nightmare.”

Chloe finally closed her eyes without taking off her wedding dress.

For months, she had been forced to sleep with her cell phone gripped tightly in her hand, waking up in terror at the slightest noise outside her apartment.

That morning, for the very first time since her father’s death, she drifted off to sleep without checking the locks three times.