The Navy had trained me, for eighteen years, to gather facts under pressure, to assess a threat, to protect the people under my command.

And in my own home, with the one person I was most responsible for protecting, I had let my hunger for comfort and stability blind me to a danger developing right under my roof.

About a week after the wedding, my commanding officer, Captain James Miller, called me into his office.

He is not a man who wastes words.

“Commander,” he said, “you don’t owe me the details of your private life.

But I need to know two things.