“Hank, if Skylar finds out about this, how bad do you think it’ll get?” I asked. He didn’t hesitate.

“It’ll get very bad, because families tear themselves apart over a lot less than millions of dollars,” he warned. “Developers will circle like vultures if they smell money, so you’ll need a very thick skin.”

I almost laughed. “Thicker than what the military gave me?”

“Blood cuts a lot deeper than bullets, Riley,” he said simply. That sentence stuck with me long after he left.

I spent the afternoon going through more maps and handwritten notes. I found an old contract draft between my father and a group of engineers.

He’d been preparing for something big before his health failed him. By late afternoon, my phone buzzed with a call from Skylar.