“You can’t arrest him — it’s Thanksgiving — we have a reservation —” “Your reservation has been canceled, ma’am,” said Judge Espinoza, without looking up from his portfolio, and I turned my back on all of them — on my weeping mother and my ashen father and my screaming sister and Cato being folded into the back of a federal car — and I said, “Lieutenant Colonel.

My bag is by the garage door.

We have a flight to catch.”

Chapter 14 — Fort Meade

The transport was quiet, and I was grateful for the quiet.

I sat by a small window and watched the country slide by underneath a floor of cloud, and the steady drone of the engines was the most peaceful sound I’d heard in months — the sound of the life Niko and I had actually built, the real one, the one that existed a long way from my family’s small loud hungers.