My son-in-law didn’t know that I was a retired 4-star General. To him, I was just a “useless old burden” he had to feed. At his birthday party, he forced me to eat in the garage. I stayed silent. But then I heard my 5-year-old grandson screaming. I ran inside and saw my son-in-law holding the boy’s head under the kitchen faucet, yelling, “Stop crying or I’ll drown you!” The water was scalding hot. My vision turned red. I kicked the door off its hinges, grabbed my son-in-law by the throat, and slammed him onto the table. I pulled out my old satellite phone. “This is Eagle One. Code Red. Send the extraction team. And bring the military police—I have a prisoner.”

Chapter 1: The Ghost in the Garage

“This is Eagle One. Code Red. Send the extraction team. And bring the military police—I have a prisoner.”

The words tasted like ash and iron, a flavor I hadn’t sampled in twenty years. But before the cavalry arrived, before the rotors chopped the suburban silence into pieces, I had to survive the birthday party.

The garage smelled of gasoline, sawdust, and the stale heat of a Texas afternoon. I sat on a blue plastic cooler, my knees aching in the damp air. The concrete floor was stained with oil, a map of neglect that mirrored my own existence in this house.

Inside, the bass from the party speakers vibrated the tools hanging on the pegboard. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was Mark’s 40th birthday. My son-in-law. The man who had inherited my daughter’s life insurance and her father along with it.

The door from the kitchen swung open, letting out a blast of conditioned air and the shrill laughter of people who equate volume with happiness. Mark stood there, holding a half-empty can of cheap beer. He was wearing a polo shirt that was too tight across his gut and a gold watch that looked heavy on his wrist.