Officer Brooks stood near his cruiser, quietly running the name Maya had given him through the federal database on his in-car computer. He typed in Naomi Jefferson, U.S. Army. The screen loaded for a moment, then a red banner flashed across the top of the terminal. Restricted file. Clearance level five required. Department of Defense. Brooks felt the blood drain from his face. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Local cops had access to basic military service records, discharge status, current station, basic rank. Getting a red restriction banner meant whoever this woman was, she was completely off the grid, operating at a tier of the military that local law enforcement had no business even looking at. “Uh, Mitch,” Brooks called out, his voice cracking slightly. “Mitch, you need to look at this.” “Not now, Brooks. I’m maintaining the perimeter,” Lawson grunted, glaring at a teenager who was filming him. “Mitch, seriously. Her file is locked by the Department of Defense. I think we need to uncuff the girl and call the captain.” Lawson stomped over to Brooks’s window, his face contorted in anger. “Are you seriously getting spooked by a computer glitch? It’s a database error. Her mom is probably some civilian contractor who cleans the mess hall. I am not backing down in front of these people.”
At that exact moment, a low, deep rumble vibrated through the pavement. It was not the sound of a standard civilian engine. It was heavy, guttural, and immensely powerful. The crowd at the end of Elm Street instinctively parted. Coming down the road was not a minivan, nor a standard sedan. It was a matte-black, heavily armored Chevrolet Tahoe. It had no license plates, only a sequence of white federal-government stencils on the rear bumper. It did not drive like a normal car. It moved with a predatory, purposeful speed, completely ignoring the speed bumps. The Tahoe came to a screeching, violent halt right in the middle of the intersection, its heavy tires mounting the curb and stopping mere inches from Lawson’s cruiser, effectively boxing it in. Lawson’s hand immediately went to his holster. “Hey, move that vehicle. This is an active police scene,” he bellowed.
The driver’s-side door of the Tahoe swung open. The air in the intersection seemed to get sucked away. Out stepped Major Naomi Jefferson. She did not look like the suburban mothers of Pine Valley. Naomi was a striking, powerfully built Black woman in her late thirties. She was dressed in pristine, sharply pressed operational camouflage, OCP fatigues. On her collar was the gold oak leaf of a major. On her left shoulder, the unmistakable subdued patch of the United States Army Special Operations Command. But it was her headgear that made Officer Brooks physically take a step backward. Perched perfectly on her head was a rifle-green beret. She had just returned from a classified briefing at Fort Carson and had driven straight there the second she received the principal’s call. She had not even bothered to change.
Major Jefferson did not look angry. Anger is an uncontrolled emotion. She looked absolutely, terrifyingly lethal. Her eyes, identical to Maya’s but hardened by years of surviving the most dangerous places on earth, locked onto Officer Lawson. She did not look at the crowd. She did not look at Officer Brooks. She looked at Lawson. And then her eyes drifted down to the curb where her fourteen-year-old daughter was sitting in steel handcuffs, crying. The micro-expression that passed over Naomi’s face made Brooks’s stomach turn to ice. It was the look of a predator identifying its prey. Naomi slammed the heavy armored door of the Tahoe shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot.