I barely had time to reach her bedside before voices and laughter came from the doorway.
Preston Harrington walked in with his mother, Rosalind, and his brother, Douglas. All three were dressed as though they had arrived for an important business meeting rather than to see a frightened woman receiving medical care.
They immediately tried to minimize everything that had happened.
Rosalind called the situation a misunderstanding and warned that Savannah would regret trying to leave Preston. She spoke openly about the family’s political influence and powerful connections, apparently convinced that their money could protect them from any consequences.
I said very little.
They interpreted my silence as fear.
What they didn’t understand was that I had spent my career functioning under pressure. I knew that losing my temper would accomplish far less than watching, listening and deciding exactly what needed to happen next.
I walked over to Savannah and asked her for one thing: complete trust.
Then I turned back toward the Harringtons.
I made it clear that I wasn’t going to be intimidated by expensive attorneys, political names or carefully worded threats. Douglas immediately reached for his phone and announced that he was contacting the family’s lawyer.
His confidence weakened when I made it clear that this situation was already moving beyond their private influence.
I contacted Major Wayne and requested immediate assistance. Not long afterward, Master Sergeant Miller entered the medical facility accompanied by law-enforcement personnel and a forensic medical specialist.
The Harrington family’s smug expressions disappeared.
Preston, Douglas and Rosalind were formally detained while authorities began investigating what had happened to Savannah. Preston became increasingly desperate as officers prepared to escort him away.
He repeatedly looked toward my daughter, apparently expecting her to intervene on his behalf.
Savannah never said a word.
She simply watched him leave.
For the first time since I entered that hospital room, everything became quiet.
Once the medical staff had thoroughly documented Savannah’s condition and transferred her somewhere more secure, she told me there was something else I needed to know.
She had hidden a small digital recorder inside the Harrington guest house.
According to Savannah, the device had captured members of the family discussing something they called Project Obsidian shortly before everything escalated.
That changed the situation completely.
I contacted Captain Marshall and asked his forensic team to locate the recorder at the Harrington property in San Antonio.
Their report was worse than I expected.
The recorder Savannah had hidden beneath a bathroom floorboard was gone.
But investigators discovered something else.
A concealed camera had been installed inside a light fixture.
Someone had been watching her.
That meant whoever removed the recorder may already have known what Savannah was doing—and possibly knew exactly how much information she had collected.
At that point, I no longer believed she was adequately protected inside an ordinary civilian hospital.
I contacted Major Vance and arranged for Savannah to be moved discreetly after dark. Military police accompanied us during the transfer to Brooke Army Medical Center, where she could remain under tighter security while receiving continued treatment.
But one question remained.
What exactly was Project Obsidian?
For that, I contacted Captain Brenda Foster, a former intelligence analyst I trusted from years earlier.
I gave her the name and asked her to find out what she could.
Her reaction immediately concerned me.
Brenda warned that even searching for the term could attract unwanted attention because it appeared to be connected to highly restricted information. Still, she began looking through the channels available to her.
What she eventually uncovered was deeply disturbing.
Project Obsidian appeared to be connected to an unofficial surveillance operation involving private corporate interests and individuals with access to military networks. Its purpose was allegedly to identify and monitor service members—and even members of their families—who might expose irregularities connected to defense procurement.
Suddenly, pieces of my own history began fitting together.
Years earlier, I had provided testimony involving questionable practices connected to major defense contractors, including Vance Dynamics.
If Brenda’s information was accurate, officers with backgrounds like mine were exactly the type of people the network wanted to watch.
Then an even darker possibility occurred to me.
Savannah’s relationship with Preston might never have been accidental.
What if getting close to my daughter had provided the Harrington family with a way to get close to me?
The possibility made me sick, but I couldn’t ignore it.
I asked Brenda to preserve whatever legitimate documentation she could find. I needed evidence strong enough to survive scrutiny, not rumors pulled from restricted databases.
The following morning, another piece unexpectedly fell into place.
Captain Conrad Ross from the legal review division contacted me through a secure channel. His office had apparently been examining irregularities connected to some of the same records.
According to Ross, my recent inquiries had triggered attention inside the system.
Then he gave me the name I wasn’t expecting.
General Raymond Sterling.
Ross believed the questionable activity reached into senior levels of the military establishment, potentially including individuals connected to the joint staff.
If that was true, blindly reporting everything through ordinary channels could alert the very people we were trying to investigate.
Ross told me he possessed physical copies of authorization records that could help establish what had actually happened.
We arranged to meet.
That night, I packed my formal uniform and began driving toward regional headquarters in Austin without advertising my destination beyond the people who absolutely needed to know.
The highway was nearly empty.
I had been driving for some time when my personal phone suddenly illuminated beside me.
A message had appeared from an unknown number.
You cannot outrun what is already watching you.
Seconds later, my cellular connection disappeared.
No calls.
No data.
Nothing.
I stared through the windshield at the dark Texas highway stretching ahead of me.
Someone knew where I was going.
Someone wanted me frightened enough to turn around.
Instead, I tightened my hands around the steering wheel and pressed harder on the accelerator.
Whatever waited for me in Austin, I was going to find out exactly how deep Project Obsidian went.