Staff Sergeant Daniel Burns pulled into the driveway of his modest two-story house in Riverside, California, the desert dust of Afghanistan still clinging to his memories. Fifteen months of deployment had aged him beyond his thirty-two years, but the thought of seeing his daughter, Emma, had sustained him through the darkest moments overseas. His wife, Mara, had been distant in their video calls lately, a coolness he’d attributed to the strain of single parenting. Daniel’s background in Army intelligence had taught him to read situations quickly, and something felt deeply wrong the moment he stepped out of his pickup truck. The lawn was overgrown, a stack of yellowed newspapers cluttered the porch, and Emma’s bicycle—her most prized possession—lay on its side in the weeds, a fine layer of rust already forming on its chrome handlebars.
He knocked on his own front door, a habit ingrained from years of military protocol, but there was no answer. He used his key, the familiar click echoing in the sudden silence. The house was in disarray. Beer bottles littered the coffee table, and the stale, acrid smell of cigarettes—something Mara had never tolerated—hung heavy in the air.
“Mara? Emma?” His voice, trained to carry across a battlefield, sounded hollow in the empty rooms.
