The MPs grabbed Grant and hauled him toward the door. Just as he crossed the threshold, my civilian attorney, Mara Ellison, pushed past him into the room, breathless, her usually perfect hair disheveled, clutching a thick red folder.

“Tessa,” she said, ignoring the chaos leaving the room. Her voice shook in a way I’d never heard from her. “Grant and his mother didn’t just try to lock you away.

They’ve taken the house. And if we don’t stop them right now, by tomorrow morning you’ll owe the federal government six million dollars.”

Chapter 3 — The Second Mortgage

General Keene dismissed the remaining staff, leaving only me, Evelyn, and Mara. The triumph of Paige’s arrest evaporated into a cold, creeping dread.

Mara opened the red folder and spread documents across the rolling hospital table. “While you were in surgery, a massive wire transfer was initiated. Your mother-in-law, Judith Holloway, used a counterfeit power of attorney — completely separate from the medical one — to leverage your home.

She took out a secondary mortgage at a staggering rate and funneled the cash into a newly formed Delaware shell company.”