For almost twelve years Niko and I had both been officers in the United States Army, and for almost twelve years we had told no one in our families the truth of it, because the truth was classified and the people we loved were, to put it plainly, a liability.

I don’t say that with contempt.

It’s just the arithmetic of the work.

When your assignments are secret, everyone who knows your real job becomes a thread someone could pull, and a family like mine — loud, status-hungry, unable to keep even ordinary gossip to itself — was not a family you briefed.

So we built the cover and we lived inside it.

Niko was a “government consultant,” a word vague enough to end conversations.