He stood tall in his dress uniform, gazing steadily and reassuringly into the camera.

I carried the photo over to the fireplace and set it precisely in the center of the dark oak mantelpiece.

Beside the frame I laid David’s engraved brass service wristband.

Sunlight from the front windows caught the silver edge of the military serial numbers cut into its underside.

The legal fallout from that cold Thanksgiving morning had taken four months to work its way completely through the federal courts.

Federal marshals had seized Julian’s fraudulent assets and removed him from the investment firm’s offices, selling off his bank holdings and luxury cars to pay three hundred and eighty thousand dollars back to the Department of Defense.