My official military title was designed to sound like nothing.

Army logistics officer.

Intentionally, gloriously boring.

The kind of title that makes people’s eyes glaze over at parties, which is exactly the point of it.

What Sheriff Prescott did not know was that for the past four years, I had been permanently assigned to a joint federal procurement task force — a unit that investigates high-level fraud involving defense contractors, offshore shell companies, and the acquisition of public land.

My whole professional life was the patient, methodical unwinding of the exact kind of scheme the Prescotts ran, at a scale and level of sophistication that made a rural sheriff’s operation look like what it was: amateurs.