CHAPTER 1: THE SMELL OF ALMONDS

The automated voice of the George Washington University Hospital PA system was the soundtrack to Katie Martinez’s new life. Code Blue, Room 304. Respiratory Therapy to the ED. It was a monotonous, rhythmic drone that usually helped her forget.

For eight months, Katie had successfully been “just Katie.” Katie the RN. Katie, who brought donuts on Fridays. Katie, who never talked about her past, never argued with doctors, and never, ever let anyone see her hands stop shaking.

She was scrubbing into a laceration repair in Bay 2 when the doors blew open.

“Coming in hot!” a paramedic screamed, his voice cracking. “Male, approx sixty. Full arrest. Down time ten minutes. CPR in progress!”

The energy in the Emergency Department shifted instantly. It was a gravitational pull. Dr. Aris, the night attending, dropped his clipboard. “Bay 4! Let’s go people, move!”

Katie didn’t want to go. Her shift ended in twelve minutes. But the instinct was a wire pulled tight in her spine. She followed the gurney.

The patient was a grey-haired man in an expensive suit that had been cut open. His chest was being pummeled by a sweating EMT.

“I need a rhythm check!” Aris shouted. “Stop compressions.”

The room paused. The monitor screamed a flatline.

“Asystole,” Aris groaned. “Resume compressions. Push one of epi. Get me an airway.”

Katie moved to the patient’s head to assist with the intubation. That’s when she saw it.

It wasn’t something a normal nurse would notice. It was the skin. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, the man wasn’t the pale blue of a typical cardiac arrest. There was a faint, sinister flush to his neck and cheeks. A distinct cherry-red.

No, Katie thought. It can’t be.

She leaned in to adjust the oxygen mask, and the smell hit her. It was faint, masked by the metallic tang of blood and the sterile scent of alcohol, but it was there.

Bitter almonds.

The memory slammed into her like a physical blow. Syria. 2018. A basement in Aleppo. Seven children on the floor, foaming at the mouth, that same sweet, cloying smell hanging in the stagnant air.

“Stop,” Katie said.

The EMT kept pumping. Dr. Aris was shouting orders for bicarbonate.

“I said STOP!” Katie yelled, her voice dropping an octave, losing the soft nurse lilt and hardening into the command tone of a Major in the United States Army.

Dr. Aris froze. He looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “Excuse me?”

“Look at his skin,” Katie said, moving fast. She grabbed the penlight from Aris’s pocket, ignoring his indignation, and flashed it in the patient’s eyes. “Pinpoint pupils. Cherry-red flush. And the breath… smell his breath.”

“I don’t have time for your hallucinations, nurse!” Aris reached for the paddles. “Charge to two hundred.”

Katie stepped between the paddles and the patient.

“If you shock him, you waste time. If you continue compressions without binding the agent, you are circulating death into his remaining organs,” Katie said, her words rapid-fire. “This is cyanide toxicity. Acute and massive. He needs Hydroxocobalamin. Now.”

“Cyanide?” Aris scoffed. “This is D.C., not a spy novel. Move or I will have security remove you.”

“Check his pockets!” Katie screamed at the paramedic. “Check his damn ID!”

The sheer force of her conviction made the paramedic pause. He fumbled with the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, pulling out a leather wallet.

Katie didn’t wait. She turned to the crash cart, her eyes scanning the labels. Atropine… Epinephrine… There. The Hazmat protocol kit. It was dusty. Nobody ever used it.

“He’s a suit,” Aris said dismissively. “Probably a lobbyist who had a heart attack.”

“Holy…” the paramedic gasped.

He held up a badge. It caught the overhead light, flashing gold.

“Dr. Aris,” the paramedic’s voice trembled. “It’s James Morrison. The FBI Director.”

Aris went pale.

“Give me the kit,” Aris whispered.

“I’ve got it,” Katie said. She had already spiked the bag. She bypassed the peripheral line and went straight for the central access the paramedics had established. The dark red liquid—the only thing that could scrub the cyanide from his mitochondria—pushed into the vein.

“Don’t touch him,” Katie ordered the room. “Let it circulate.”

Ten seconds. Twenty.

The monitor beeped once. A weak, thready tone.

Then again. Stronger.

“We have sinus rhythm,” the respiratory therapist breathed. “Pressure is… climbing. 80 over 50. 90 over 60.”

Dr. Aris slumped against the wall, looking like he might vomit. He looked at Katie. There was no gratitude in his eyes, only fear and confusion.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Katie didn’t answer. She stared at her hands. They were trembling now. The adrenaline was fading, leaving the cold reality behind.

She had just exposed herself.

CHAPTER 2: THE GHOST IN SCRUBS

The transition from “Medical Emergency” to “National Security Incident” took exactly fourteen minutes.

The Emergency Department was locked down. Local police secured the perimeter, but they were quickly pushed aside by men in dark suits with earpieces and aggressive demeanors.

Katie stood by the medication station, methodically sorting vials. It was a coping mechanism. Organize. Categorize. Control.

“Ms. Martinez?”

She turned. A female agent, sharp features, hair pulled back in a severe bun, stood there. She held a tablet.

“Agent Rodriguez, Secret Service,” the woman said. She didn’t offer a hand. “Director Morrison is being moved to the ICU. We need to take your statement.”

“I told the police everything,” Katie said softly. “I recognized the symptoms. I administered the antidote.”

“How?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did you recognize cyanide poisoning by smell, Ms. Martinez?” Rodriguez swiped on her tablet. “I spoke to our chemical warfare guys. They said that ‘bitter almond’ scent is genetically detectable by only 40% of the population. And even then, you have to know what you’re looking for.”

Rodriguez stepped closer, invading Katie’s personal space.

“You’re a thirty-two-year-old nurse from Ohio. Your file says you worked in a pediatrician’s office before coming here. So tell me, where does a pediatric nurse learn to identify a KGB-style assassination method in under thirty seconds?”

Katie remained silent. She looked at the exit sign. Run, her brain whispered. Disappear again.

“We know about the gap,” Rodriguez said, her voice dropping. “We ran your prints. They didn’t match a nurse named Katie from Ohio. They matched a classified file in the DoD database.”

The double doors swung open.

“That’s enough, Rodriguez.”

The voice was gravel and authority. A man walked in, flanked by two tactical officers carrying rifles. He was Asian-American, older, with scars that spoke of a lifetime of violence. Deputy Director Michael Chang.

Chang stopped in front of Katie. He didn’t look suspicious. He looked impressed.

“Major,” Chang said, nodding slightly.

Katie sighed, her shoulders dropping. The charade was over.

“I’m not a Major anymore, sir,” she said.

“Once a Ranger, always a Ranger,” Chang said. “Or in your case, Delta Support. JSOF, right? 2016 to 2022?”

Rodriguez looked between them, stunned. “Delta? She was an operator?”

“She was the lead Physician Assistant for the counter-terrorism task force,” Chang corrected. “She’s patched up more bullet holes in moving helicopters than you’ve seen in movies.” He turned back to Katie. “We thought you fell off the face of the earth after Mark died.”

Hearing Mark’s name was like taking a bullet. Katie flinched.

“I wanted a normal life,” she whispered. “I just wanted to save people without getting shot at.”

“Well,” Chang looked around the crowded ER. “You picked a hell of a night to come out of retirement.”

“Is he going to make it?” Katie asked, nodding toward the elevator where Morrison had been taken.

“Physically? Yes, thanks to you,” Chang said. “But politically? Someone just tried to decapitate the federal law enforcement of the United States. We are in a war, Major. And we are currently losing.”

“That’s not my problem,” Katie said, turning back to her cart. “I saved him. My shift is over. I’m going home.”

“I don’t think so,” Chang said.

Before Katie could argue, the lights flickered.

A low, mechanical hum started deep in the building’s infrastructure. Then, the fire alarms screamed.

WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP.

“Code Red. Code Red. All personnel evacuate.”

Chang grabbed his radio. “Control, report. Is there smoke?”

“Negative, sir,” the radio crackled. “Sensors are clear. But the alarms are triggering manually from the basement.”

“It’s a hack,” Rodriguez said. “They’re trying to clear the building.”

Katie felt the hair on her arms stand up. She knew this tactic. She had seen it in Mosul.

“No,” Katie said, her voice cutting through the alarm. “They aren’t trying to clear the building. They’re trying to clear the civilians.”

Chang looked at her.

“If you evacuate the staff,” Katie said, her eyes wide, “who is left to protect the patient?”

BOOM.

The floor jumped. Dust rained down from the ceiling tiles. The explosion was distant, maybe the parking garage, but it was powerful enough to rattle the teeth in Katie’s skull.

“Secondary device!” Rodriguez yelled.

“No,” Katie grabbed a pair of scissors from the counter, gripping them like a dagger. “Breaching charge. They’re inside.”

CHAPTER 3: THE KILLBOX

The explosion had killed the power. The Emergency Room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the red strobes of the fire alarm and the pale green glow of the backup generators kicking in.

Panic erupted. Patients were screaming. Nurses were scrambling.

“Quiet!” Chang roared, drawing his weapon. A standard-issue Glock 19. It looked small against the encroaching darkness.

“Rodriguez, get a team to the elevators. Lock down the stairwells!” Chang ordered.

“Sir, we have no comms with the exterior detail,” Rodriguez said, tapping her earpiece frantically. “Jammers.”

“They’re isolating the objective,” Katie said. She was moving now, stripping off her light blue scrub top to reveal a grey undershirt. It was easier to move in. She grabbed a roll of trauma tape and taped the scissors to her thigh.

“Major, you need to evacuate with the civilians,” Chang said, though he didn’t sound like he meant it.

“You have four agents in here,” Katie said, scanning the room. “And you have a Principal on the fourth floor who can’t walk. You need a medic who can shoot. Do you have a spare weapon?”

Chang hesitated, then pulled a backup ankle holster from his leg and tossed it to her. A compact Sig Sauer.

Katie checked the chamber. Loaded. She racked the slide. The sound was comforting.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They moved toward the service elevator. The hospital, usually a place of healing, had transformed into a labyrinth of shadows.

“Why Morrison?” Katie asked as they waited for the elevator. “Why now?”

“He was about to testify,” Chang said, his eyes on the floor indicator numbers. “He has evidence linking a Russian oligarch to a massive trafficking ring. Names, dates, bank accounts. If he talks tomorrow, heads roll in Moscow.”

“So they sent a cleanup crew,” Katie muttered.

The elevator dinged. Level 4. ICU.

The doors opened, and the smell of gunpowder hit them instantly.

“Contact front!” Chang yelled, shoving Katie back.

Three men in black tactical gear stood at the end of the hallway. They weren’t moving like street thugs. They moved like water. Spetsnaz, Katie realized.

Bullets shredded the drywall next to Katie’s head. She dropped to a knee, firing two controlled shots. One hostile went down, clutching his leg.

“Suppressing fire!” Rodriguez screamed, opening up with her service weapon.

“We need to get to Morrison’s room,” Chang shouted over the gunfire. “Room 402. End of the hall.”

“We can’t drag a bed through this!” Katie yelled back.

“Then we carry him!”

They leapfrogged down the hallway. Move. Fire. Cover. Move. Fire. Cover. It was a dance Katie knew better than she knew her own heartbeat.

They burst into Room 402.

Morrison was awake, groggy, staring at the door with wide eyes. A nurse—young, maybe twenty-two—was cowering in the corner, sobbing.

“Get him up!” Chang ordered the agents.

“Wait,” Katie said. She looked at the window. The ICU was on the fourth floor. Outside, below, she could see the flashing lights of the blocked street, but the glass was reinforced.

“They’re coming through the door,” Katie said. “We’re trapped.”

The hallway gunfire stopped. That was worse. Silence meant they were stacking up. Preparing to breach.

“We hold here,” Chang said, flipping a table for cover.

“No,” Katie said. She looked at the oxygen tanks bolted to the wall. She looked at the defibrillator on the crash cart.

A plan formed. It was reckless, stupid, and exactly the kind of thing Mark would have done.

“We don’t hold,” Katie said, grabbing the oxygen tank wrench. “We welcome them in.”

She turned to the terrified young nurse. “Sarah, give me the alcohol prep pads. All of them. And the hand sanitizer.”

“What are you doing?” Rodriguez asked, reloading.

Katie began unscrewing the valve on the oxygen tank, letting the gas hiss into the room.

“I’m making a fuel-air bomb,” Katie said grimly. “Everyone get behind the mattress. When that door opens, I’m going to light them up.”

She looked at Chang.

“Ready to fry some Russians, sir?”

Chang looked at the hissing tank, then at the spark lighter in Katie’s hand (found in the drawer for testing heat sensors). A grim smile touched his lips.

“Lead the way, Major.”

The handle of the door began to turn.

Katie flicked the lighter.

“Get down!”

CHAPTER 4: FIRE AND GLASS

The door to Room 402 didn’t open; it disintegrated.

The breach charge detonated with a sharp, cracking thunder that turned the heavy oak door into a spray of deadly splinters. In that split second, the laws of physics seemed to suspend. The smoke curled inward, thick and grey, a herald for the violence stepping through the frame.

Katie didn’t flinch. She had spent fifteen years mastering the art of the split second.

As the first black-clad figure stepped through the smoke, rifle raised, Katie threw the spark lighter. It tumbled through the air, a tiny, insignificant piece of plastic against a wall of military-grade armor.

But the room was saturated with oxygen.

The spark met the gas.

WHOOM.

It wasn’t a movie explosion. There was no fireball that consumed the building. It was a pressure wave—a superheated hammer of air that expanded instantly. The oxygen-rich atmosphere ignited in a flash-burn, consuming the available fuel in a terrifying, concussive hiss.

The lead hostile was thrown backward into the hallway as if yanked by a cable. The windows of Room 402 blew out, showering the street four stories below with tempered glass.

Inside, behind the overturned mattress, the heat was intense but momentary.

“Move!” Katie screamed, her ears ringing.

Chang was already up. He fired through the smoke into the hallway—pop-pop, pop-pop—controlled, rhythmic suppression.

Katie grabbed the head of Morrison’s bed. Sarah, the young nurse, was curled in a ball, hyperventilating. Katie grabbed her scrub top and hauled her up.

“Sarah! Look at me!” Katie barked. The command voice cut through the girl’s panic. “You are not dying today. But you have to work. Grab the IV pole. Do not let those lines pull out. Do you understand?”

Sarah nodded, eyes wide, terror replaced by a fragile, desperate focus.

“Go!”

They pushed the bed into the corridor. The hallway was a war zone. The sprinklers had activated, raining dirty, grey water over everything. The emergency lights strobed, turning the scene into a disorienting stop-motion nightmare.

Two bodies lay near the stairwell—the hostiles caught in the blast. But there were voices shouting in Russian from the stairwell above.

“They’re flanking from the fifth floor,” Chang yelled, slapping a fresh magazine into his Glock. “We can’t go up. We can’t stay here.”

“The Surgical Suite,” Katie said, wiping water from her eyes. “Second floor. It has steel reinforced doors, independent air filtration, and no windows. It’s a bunker.”

“That’s two floors down,” Rodriguez shouted, firing a round down the hall to keep heads down. “We’re exposed.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Katie said. She looked at Morrison. The Director was conscious, his eyes darting around, taking it all in. He wasn’t afraid. He was calculating.

“Give me a weapon,” Morrison rasped. His voice was weak, his throat burned by the tube that had been there hours ago.

“You can barely lift your head, sir,” Katie said, unlocking the wheels of the bed. “Let us do the shooting. You just breathe.”

“Contact rear!” Rodriguez screamed.

The elevator doors at the far end of the hall dinged open. Two more hostiles.

“Push!” Chang roared.

Katie shoved the bed. It picked up speed, the wheels squealing on the wet linoleum. She ran, head down, using the heavy hospital bed as a battering ram. Bullets snapped past them, chipping the tile, tearing into the ceiling.

Crack-thwack.

A round hit the IV pump, shattering the plastic casing.

“Sarah, get down!” Katie shoved the nurse behind the bulk of the bed frame.

Katie drew the Sig Sauer from her waistband. She didn’t stop running. She extended her arm over the patient, breathless, and fired three shots while moving.

One hostile dropped.

They hit the stairwell door. Chang kicked it open.

“Get him in! Go, go, go!”

They wrestled the heavy bed into the concrete landing of the stairwell. It was tight. The bed barely fit.

“We can’t take the bed down,” Katie realized. The turns were too sharp.

She looked at Morrison. “Sir, I’m going to have to carry you. It’s going to hurt.”

“Do it,” Morrison said.

Katie grabbed a backboard from the wall mount. “Chang, help me transfer. Rodriguez, hold the door!”

They rolled the Director of the FBI onto the bright yellow plastic board. He groaned, face twisting in pain, but didn’t cry out. Katie strapped him in—chest, hips, legs.

“Leave the pumps,” Katie ordered Sarah. “Just bring the meds. Bag him if he stops breathing.”

Katie grabbed the head of the board. Chang grabbed the feet.

“On my count,” Katie said. The adrenaline was screaming in her veins, but her mind was cold, calm ice. “One. Two. Move.”

They began the descent.

CHAPTER 5: THE LONG WAY DOWN

The stairwell was an echo chamber. Every footstep sounded like a gunshot; every gunshot sounded like a cannon.

They were heavy. Morrison was a big man, dead weight on the board. Katie’s biceps burned. Her shoulder, where old shrapnel from Kandahar still ached in the rain, screamed in protest.

Just like the mountains, she told herself. Just a ruck. Keep moving.

“Hostiles on the landing above!” Rodriguez yelled from the rear guard position.

Bullets sparked off the metal railing, pinging wildly down the shaft.

“Keep moving!” Katie grunted, taking the stairs two at a time, moving backward. She couldn’t see where she was going; she had to trust Chang.

“Turn!” Chang shouted.

They swung the board around the landing. Katie’s back slammed into the concrete wall. She ignored the pain.

“Clear!”

They descended to the third floor.

Then, the door to the third-floor landing flew open.

A hostile stepped out, right in front of Katie. He was less than five feet away. She saw his eyes—blue, cold, surprised. He raised his rifle.

Katie couldn’t drop the board. If she dropped it, Morrison would tumble down the concrete stairs, likely snapping his neck.

Her hands were full. She was defenseless.

I’m going to die, the thought came, not with fear, but with a strange, dull acceptance. This is it.

Then, a blur of motion.

Sarah—the twenty-two-year-old nurse who liked Taylor Swift and brought donuts on Fridays—swung the heavy oxygen cylinder she had been dragging.

It was a clumsy, desperate swing, but it connected. The steel tank cracked against the hostile’s helmet with a sickening clung.

His head snapped back. His aim went wide. The bullets tore into the ceiling.

Before he could recover, Chang released his hand from the board, drew his weapon in a blur of motion, and fired one round. Point blank. Center mass.

The hostile crumpled.

“Jesus,” Chang breathed, grabbing the board again. “Nice swing, Sarah.”

Sarah was shaking, tears streaming down her face, but she picked up the oxygen tank again. “I played softball,” she sobbed. “I played varsity softball.”

“Let’s go!” Katie yelled. “Second floor!”

They burst out of the stairwell onto Level 2. The Surgical Suite.

“Breach it!” Katie ordered.

Chang swiped his badge. Access Denied. The system was locked down.

“Kick it!”

Chang and Rodriguez slammed their boots into the double doors. They held.

“Shoot the hinges!” Katie yelled.

The gunfire behind them was getting louder. They were coming down the stairs.

Rodriguez fired into the locking mechanism. The metal shredded. They shoved the doors open and spilled into the sterile, white hallway of the OR.

“OR 3 is the trauma room,” Katie directed. “Go! Go!”

They ran down the pristine corridor. They wheeled Morrison into Operating Room 3 and slammed the heavy, lead-lined door.

“Barricade!”

They shoved the anesthesia machine, the supply carts, and the scrub sink cabinets against the door.

For a moment, there was silence. Just the heavy breathing of four people and the hum of the air filtration system.

Katie checked Morrison. He was pale, sweating, but breathing.

“Pulse is 110,” she said, fingers on his carotid. “He’s holding.”

“How long until they blow that door?” Rodriguez asked, checking her ammo. “I have one mag left.”

“I have two,” Chang said. He looked at Katie.

“Seven rounds,” Katie said. She looked at the scalpels on the sterile tray. “And some sharp objects.”

“This is the Alamo,” Rodriguez muttered.

“No,” Katie said. She walked to the wall phone. Dead. She grabbed the radio from Chang’s belt. “The jammers are effective, but only for RF signals. This is a hospital. We have hardlines.”

She went to the corner of the room, ripped the panel off the wall intercom—the old-school wired system used to page doctors in the 90s, never removed.

She pressed the button.

“Operator,” a terrified voice crackled.

“This is Major Katherine Martinez,” Katie said, her voice steady. “I am in OR 3 with Director James Morrison. We are surrounded by hostiles. I need you to patch this hardline directly to the Washington Field Office Command Center. Do not transfer me. Do it now.”

A pause. Then, a click.

“Command, this is Assistant Director Walsh,” a new voice said.

“This is Martinez. We are in the kill box. We have three shooters, one VIP. We are out of ammo. Hostiles are rigging the door. If you aren’t here in three minutes, there won’t be anyone left to save.”

“Major,” Walsh’s voice was calm. “Look at the window.”

“There are no windows in here,” Katie said.

“Listen.”

Katie tilted her head.

Above the hum of the ventilation, she heard it. A low thrumming. A vibration that shook the scalpels on the metal tray. It grew louder. And louder.

Thwup-thwup-thwup-thwup.

“Is that…” Rodriguez looked up.

The sound of shattering glass came from the floor above. Then, the distinct, heavy thud-thud-thud of boots hitting the floor. Dozens of them.

“Breach! Breach! Federal Agents! Get down!”

The screams came from the hallway outside their door. The Russian shouting turned into screams of pain. Heavy machine gun fire erupted—the deep, throaty bark of M4s.

It lasted ten seconds.

Then, silence.

A heavy knock on the OR door. Three rhythmic pounds.

“FBI Hostage Rescue Team! Sound off!”

Chang slumped against the wall, sliding down until he hit the floor. He laughed, a dry, ragged sound.

Katie walked to the barricade. Her hands finally started shaking again. She pulled the anesthesia machine back.

She opened the door.

A giant of a man in full tactical gear, night vision goggles flipped up, stood there. Behind him, a sea of FBI agents filled the hallway.

“Director Morrison?” the agent asked.

Katie stepped aside, revealing the man on the backboard.

“He’s alive,” Katie said. She felt the adrenaline crash, her knees turning to water. “He’s alive.”

CHAPTER 6: THE GHOST AND THE BADGE

Six weeks later.

The fall air in Virginia was crisp, smelling of dried leaves and woodsmoke. It was the kind of day Katie used to love before the world turned grey.

She sat on a bench outside the FBI Academy at Quantico. She wasn’t wearing scrubs. She was wearing a blazer and jeans, feeling uncomfortable in clothes that weren’t a uniform of some kind.

“Major Martinez.”

She didn’t turn. She knew the voice.

James Morrison walked around the bench. He looked different standing up. Stronger. The color was back in his face, though he walked with a cane—a souvenir from the rough transport down the stairwell.

“Mr. Director,” Katie said. “You shouldn’t be walking this far. Physical therapy said—”

“I know what they said,” Morrison smiled. He sat down next to her. “But I wanted to give you this myself.”

He handed her a small velvet box.

Katie opened it. Inside lay a medallion. The FBI Medal of Valor.

“I can’t accept this,” Katie said, snapping the box shut.

“Why? Because you weren’t an agent?” Morrison asked. “Or because you think you were just doing your job?”

“Because I was trying to hide,” Katie said. She looked out at the tree line. “I left the Army because I couldn’t handle the noise anymore. The chaos. Mark died in a place just like that stairwell, and I… I ran away. I became a nurse to pretend the world was safe.”

She looked at her hands.

“But it’s not safe. Is it?”

“No,” Morrison said softly. “It’s not.”

He leaned forward, resting his hands on his cane.

“You know, Katie, when the lights went out in that hospital, I watched you. I saw the nurse vanish. And I saw the soldier come back. You didn’t do it because you wanted to fight. You did it because you refused to let the darkness win.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a file.

“The Bureau needs people who know the difference between protocol and survival. We need people who can smell almonds in a cardiac arrest and make fuel-air bombs out of medical supplies.”

He placed the file on the bench between them.

“Special Agent. Medical/Tactical Integration Unit. You’d be teaching our agents how to stay alive when the plan goes to hell. And you’d be leading a team of field medics for high-risk warrants.”

Katie stared at the file. “I swore I was done with guns.”

“You were done with war,” Morrison corrected. “But this isn’t war. This is justice. There’s a difference.”

He stood up.

“You don’t have to answer today. But Katie… you’re a sheepdog. You can try to paint yourself to look like a sheep, you can graze with them, sleep with them. But when the wolf shows up… you’re going to bare your teeth. It’s who you are. Don’t apologize for it.”

He walked away, his cane tapping rhythmically on the pavement.

Katie sat there for a long time. She watched the wind strip the last few leaves from an oak tree.

She thought about the hospital. The fear. The blood. But she also thought about Sarah, the young nurse, swinging that oxygen tank. She thought about the moment the Hostage Rescue Team burst in—the feeling that, for once, the good guys had arrived on time.

She thought about Mark. He used to say, “If you can help, you must help.”

She had tried to help by fixing broken ankles and soothing fevers. And that was noble work. But it wasn’t her work.

She picked up the file. It was heavy. It felt like responsibility. It felt like a burden.

It felt like home.

Katie stood up. She took the Medal of Valor and slipped it into her pocket. She picked up the file, tucked it under her arm, and started walking toward the Academy building.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Sarah.

Hey, you coming back to the shift tonight? Dr. Aris is actually being nice for once.

Katie stopped. She typed a reply.

No. Tell him I quit.

She deleted it. That wasn’t right.

She typed again.

Tell him I found a better use for my skill set.

She hit send.

Katie Martinez walked through the glass doors of the FBI Academy. She didn’t look back at the parking lot. She looked forward, into the building, where the noise was, where the chaos was, and where—finally—she knew she belonged.