THE GHOST OF GRANITE REACH

PART 1: The Dead Don’t Bleed

They told the world I was dead.

The United States government, the Department of Defense, and the black-inked redacted files of the DIA all agreed on one thing: Staff Sergeant Eley Torm burned to death six months ago in a botched operation on the border of a country we weren’t supposed to be in. They sent a flag to a grandmother I hadn’t spoken to in ten years. They buried an empty casket at a site classified for “training accidents.” They erased my social security number, froze my bank accounts, and scrubbed my face from the digital world.

Technically, I didn’t exist. I was a ghost. A glitch in the system.

But ghosts aren’t supposed to feel the blistering heat of the Nevada desert melting the rubber soles of their boots. Ghosts aren’t supposed to taste the copper tang of blood from a bitten lip or feel the phantom weight of a dog’s head resting on their thigh.

And ghosts definitely aren’t supposed to be standing outside the perimeter fence of the Fort Bridger K9 Training Complex at 15:45 hours, watching the minute hand of a stolen watch tick down toward an execution.

I adjusted the collar of my worn canvas jacket. It was too hot for the heavy fabric, easily a hundred degrees on the tarmac, but I needed the concealment. I needed to hide the scars on my arms and the military-grade posture that gave me away to anyone who knew what to look for. I pulled my sunglasses lower, shielding my eyes from the glare of the razor wire that coiled along the fence line like a crown of thorns.

I knew what was happening inside that beige concrete building across the lot. I knew it because I knew the protocols. I knew the smell of that briefing room—stale coffee, nervous sweat, and the metallic scent of bureaucracy trying to justify a mistake.

1600 hours. That was the deadline.

In fifteen minutes, they were going to kill the only thing in this world that knew I was still alive.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing the soft, worn edges of a photograph. It was creased down the middle, folded and unfolded a thousand times in the dark of cheap motel rooms and the backs of Greyhound buses. Four of us in the photo. Ironside. Viper. Hatchet. And me. And at our feet, two Malinois with eyes like lasers. Reaper. And Havoc.

Havoc.

I closed my hand around the photo, grounding myself. The grief tried to rise up, a tidal wave of black water, but I shoved it back down. I locked it away in the same box where I kept the sound of the explosion and the scream Viper made when the shrapnel hit. There was no time for grief. Not today.

“Focus, Torm,” I whispered, the words sounding rusty. I hadn’t spoken to another human being in three days.

I started walking.

The heat radiated off the asphalt in shimmering waves, distorting the horizon. To the casual observer, I was just a drifter, a woman in jeans and boots who looked like she’d walked a thousand miles of hard ground. And I had. But I wasn’t drifting. I was hunting.

I could see the K9 runs in the distance, rows of chain-link and concrete. Most of the dogs were resting in the shade, smart enough to wait out the sun. But not him.

I saw movement in the far pen. Isolated. Reinforced. A double layer of chain-link, topped with an inward-facing kick-plate.

A shape paced inside. Burnished gold and black fur. Eighty pounds of coiled muscle moving with a predator’s agitation. He was turning tight circles, snapping at the air, throwing his body against the fencing with a violence that rattled the metal even from a hundred yards away.

Havoc.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a painful, frantic rhythm. He looked terrible. Even from here, I could see the patches of missing fur, the jagged scar on his ear, the way his ribs showed through his coat. But it was the movement that killed me. He moved like a creature possessed, driven by a panic he couldn’t articulate.

He was waiting for a command that never came. He was waiting for me.

I picked up my pace, my boots crunching on the gravel. I passed the outer perimeter sign: RESTRICTED AREA. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

I didn’t break stride.

A young Lieutenant was standing near the guard shack, looking bored. He was fresh-faced, his uniform crisp, his boots un-scuffed. He was likely fresh out of OCS, still learning the rhythm of the base. He looked up as I approached, his eyes narrowing behind his aviators. He saw a civilian. A threat.

“Ma’am!” he shouted, stepping away from the shade of the overhang. He held up a hand, palm out. “Ma’am, this is a restricted area. You need to turn around and check in at the main gate if you have business here.”

I didn’t stop. I didn’t even look at him. My eyes were locked on that distant pen, on the dog that had just stopped pacing. Havoc had frozen. His head was up, his nostrils flaring.

He smelled me.

“Ma’am!” The Lieutenant’s voice sharpened, dropping an octave. The boredom was gone, replaced by the twitchy adrenaline of a rookie facing the unknown. “I am ordering you to stop!”

I kept walking. It was a trance. The world narrowed down to a tunnel. Me. The gate. The dog.

“Control,” the Lieutenant barked into his shoulder radio, his hand dropping to the holster at his hip. “We have a civilian breach at Sector 4. Female. No visible ID. Non-compliant. Heading toward the K9 holding area.”

I heard the crackle of a response, but the words were lost in the blood rushing in my ears. The Lieutenant broke into a jog, cutting across the gravel to intercept me.

“Ma’am, stop right now or I will be forced to restrain you!”

He reached out to grab my arm. It was a sloppy move, telegraphed from a mile away.

Muscle memory, dormant for six months, snapped awake. I didn’t think. I just moved. As his hand came toward my bicep, I sidestepped, shifting my weight. I rotated my shoulder, letting his momentum carry him past me. It was smooth, fluid—like water flowing around a stone.

He stumbled, boots skidding on the gravel, and nearly went face-first into the dirt. He recovered quickly, scrambling back to his feet, but his hand was on his sidearm now, pulling the pistol from its holster.

“Freeze!” he screamed, the gun leveling at my chest.

I stopped.

Slowly, I turned to face him. I lowered my chin, peering over the rim of my sunglasses. I needed him to see my eyes. I needed him to see that I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t high. I was just… inevitable.

“I am not here to cause trouble, Lieutenant,” I said. My voice was low, scraping like gravel. It sounded like the voice of someone who had died and come back. “I am here for the dog.”

The Lieutenant blinked, sweat stinging his eyes. “The dog? You mean the asset slated for termination?”

“His name is Havoc,” I said. “And I trained him.”

Before he could respond, the heavy steel door of the command building banged open. Boots pounded on the pavement—heavy, authoritative strides.

“Hold your fire, Greer!”

I didn’t look away from the Lieutenant, but I registered the new arrivals. A Colonel. Bird on his collar. High and tight haircut, jaw like granite. Colonel Renwick. I knew his file. A hard-liner. A man who followed the book because the book was the only thing that made sense in a chaotic world.

Behind him were two MPs with M4s strapped to their chests, and a woman in a lab coat—Dr. Lahiri, the base vet. She looked terrified, clutching a tablet to her chest like a shield.

Renwick marched up to us, stopping five feet away. He radiated heat and anger. He looked me up and down, analyzing the threat. No uniform. No rank. But he saw it. He saw the way I stood—feet shoulder-width apart, weight balanced, hands loose but ready. He recognized the tribe.

“Miss,” Renwick barked, “step away from the enclosure. That animal is extremely dangerous. We have two handlers in the infirmary because of him.”

I turned my head slowly to look at him. “He’s not dangerous, Colonel. He’s confused.”

“I don’t know who you think you are,” Renwick said, his voice dropping to that dangerous, quiet register that usually made privates wet themselves. “But you are trespassing on a federal military installation. You need to leave. Now.”

I turned back to the pen. Havoc was standing on his hind legs now, paws pressed into the chain link. He wasn’t barking. He was making a sound I had never heard him make before—a high, keening whine that tore through the air. It was the sound of a soul crying out.

“Eley Torm,” I said quietly. “I trained him.”

Silence. Absolute silence, except for the wind and Havoc’s cry.

Dr. Lahiri stepped forward, her eyes wide. “There’s no record of that name,” she said, her voice trembling. “Havoc came back from Operation Granite Reach six months ago. His handler was listed as KIA. Killed in Action.”

I felt a cold smile touch my lips. It wasn’t a happy smile. “I know.”

Renwick frowned, his brow furrowing. “We have full documentation on this animal. Every handler, every deployment. Your name isn’t in the file.”

“I know,” I repeated.

“Then you need to explain yourself,” Renwick demanded, crossing his thick arms. “Before I have you arrested and removed in cuffs.”

I finally turned my whole body to face him. I took off my sunglasses. The desert sun was blinding, but I didn’t blink. I let him see the hollowness in my face, the age that the last six months had carved into me.

“You can’t find my name, Colonel, because I was erased. Administratively. Completely. Like I never existed.”

Renwick scoffed. “That’s not how the military works.”

“It is when the mission never happened,” I shot back.

The tension in the air snapped tight. The MPs shifted their grips on their rifles. Lahiri sucked in a sharp breath. Even Greer, the rookie Lieutenant, lowered his gun slightly, looking between us with confusion.

“If the mission didn’t happen,” Renwick said slowly, “then how is the dog here?”

“Because he’s the only evidence left,” I said.

I turned my back on them. It was the most dangerous thing I could do, but I had to show them. I had to show them who Havoc really was. I walked toward the gate of the enclosure.

“Halt!” Renwick shouted. “Do not enter that pen! That is a direct order!”

“Colonel!” Lahiri yelled, grabbing his arm. “Wait! If she trained him… look at the dog. Look at him!”

Renwick hesitated. We all looked. Havoc had dropped to all fours. He was shaking, vibrating with an intensity that looked like a seizure. He wasn’t looking at the handlers or the guns. He was looking at me.

“If she enters that pen,” Renwick warned, his voice tight, “and that dog attacks, we will have no choice but to put him down immediately. Snipers are already on the roof. Is that what you want? You want to be the reason he dies right now?”

I stopped with my hand on the cold steel latch of the gate. I looked up at the roof of the adjacent building. I saw the glint of a scope. They were ready to kill him. They were just waiting for an excuse.

“He won’t attack me,” I said.

“You can’t know that!” Renwick yelled. “He turned on his last two handlers in seconds. He put a man in surgery yesterday!”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I can.”

I lifted the latch. The metal groaned, a heavy, rusty sound.

“Step back!” Renwick bellowed to his men. “Everyone step back! Shooters, standby!”

I didn’t hesitate. I swung the gate open and stepped into the kill zone.

The smell hit me first. Urine. Concrete. Fear. The smell of a cage.

Havoc was twenty feet away at the back of the run. As soon as I stepped in, the change was instantaneous. The whining stopped. The shaking stopped. He went rigid. His ears flattened against his skull. His lips pulled back, revealing white teeth that could crush bone like dry twigs. A low growl started deep in his chest, a rumble that I felt in the soles of my boots.

He didn’t recognize me.

My heart stopped. Six months. Six months of trauma, of abandonment, of being beaten and drugged and dragged from cage to cage. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the dog I knew was gone, buried under the layers of PTSD.

I was wearing civilian clothes. I smelled like cheap soap and desert dust, not the Kevlar and gun oil he knew.

“Havoc,” I whispered.

He exploded.

He launched himself across the twenty feet of concrete. He was a blur of teeth and fury, moving faster than human reaction time.

Outside the fence, the crowd gasped. I heard the safety click off a rifle.

I didn’t run. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t raise my hands to protect my throat.

I dropped to one knee.

It was the most vulnerable position possible. I exposed my neck. I opened my hands, palms up, at my sides. I bowed my head, looking at the concrete, submitting completely.

Trust me, I prayed. Please, buddy. Remember.

The sound of his claws scrambling on the concrete was deafening. The heat of his breath hit my face.

He skidded.

He slammed on the brakes inches from my body, his momentum sliding him sideways. Dust kicked up into my eyes. I felt the air displace as his jaws snapped shut, inches from my ear.

He stood there, panting, his body looming over me. I could feel the heat coming off him. I could hear the wet, ragged sound of his breathing. He was smelling me. He was inhaling the scent of my skin, searching for the one molecule of memory that remained.

I stayed frozen. I didn’t breathe.

Then, I whispered one word. A word that wasn’t in any manual. A word we had made up in the mud of a trench in a country that didn’t exist.

“Sasha.”

It meant Safe.

I felt him freeze.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I raised my right hand. I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the ground. I rotated my fist twice, counter-clockwise.

Drop.

Havoc collapsed. He didn’t just lie down; he melted. His front legs slid out, his belly hit the concrete, and he pressed his chin against my knee. The growl vanished, replaced by a soft, trembling whimper.

I let out a breath that felt like it had been held for half a year. I looked up.

Havoc’s eyes were locked on mine. They weren’t wild anymore. They were soft. They were confused. They were heartbroken.

“Hi, buddy,” I choked out, tears finally spilling over my dusty cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I was late.”

He licked the tears off my face. One swipe of a rough tongue.

I moved my hand again. Fast. Complex. A sequence of finger twitches.

Up. Scan. Guard.

Havoc was on his feet instantly. He spun around, placing himself between me and the gate, between me and Renwick, between me and the guns. He stood at perfect attention, chest out, ears swiveled like radar dishes. He wasn’t a wild animal anymore. He was a weapon. And he was armed.

I stood up, placing a hand on his head. He leaned into my leg, solid as a rock.

I looked through the chain link at the stunned audience.

Lieutenant Greer’s mouth was hanging open. Dr. Lahiri was crying, her hand over her mouth. The MPs had lowered their rifles, looking at their commander for orders.

Colonel Renwick looked pale. He stared at Havoc, then at me, processing the impossibility of what he had just seen. That wasn’t obedience. That was telepathy. That was a bond forged in fire.

I walked to the gate, Havoc glued to my leg. He moved when I moved, stopped when I stopped. I opened the gate and stepped out, back into the world of the living.

Renwick stepped forward, but this time, he didn’t look angry. He looked shaken.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice rough.

“I told you,” I said, my hand gripping the fur on Havoc’s neck. “His handler.”

“Then why isn’t your name in the system?”

I met his gaze. I let the coldness of the last six months flood into my voice.

“Because someone didn’t want anyone to know I survived.”

Renwick stared at me. “That’s impossible. We have access to everything.”

“Not everything,” I said. “Check the classified archives. Look for the redacted section in his mission log. The one flagged SCIF-level clearance.”

Renwick pulled out his phone. He stepped away, making a call. I saw his face change as he listened. I saw the color drain away. I saw the moment he realized I wasn’t crazy.

He hung up and walked back to me. The silence was heavy, suffocating.

“You’re Eley Torm,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“You were part of Operation Granite Reach.”

“Yes.”

“What happened out there, Torm?” he asked, his voice low. “Why does the official record say you burned to death?”

I looked down at Havoc. He was watching the horizon, watching for threats, doing the job he was born to do.

“Because,” I said, looking back at the Colonel, “my team died for a mission that officially never happened. And the only reason I’m still alive is because someone decided it was easier to erase me than explain why I survived.”

Renwick looked at the MPs. “Escort Miss Torm to Briefing Room Three. Nobody speaks to her until I get clearance from Command.”

The MPs stepped forward. Havoc growled, a low rumble of warning.

“Easy,” I murmured, touching his ear. “Stand down.”

He fell silent instantly.

“I’ll go,” I said. “But the dog comes with me.”

Renwick hesitated. He looked at the dangerous animal that had just injured his best men, now standing like a statue beside a ghost.

“Fine,” Renwick said. “But if he twitches, we shoot.”

“He won’t twitch,” I said.

As we walked toward the concrete building, flanked by armed guards, I felt the weight of the photograph in my pocket again. I had found Havoc. That was the first part of the mission.

But now came the hard part.

Now I had to stay alive long enough to tell the truth. And looking at the way Renwick was staring at his phone, I knew the clock hadn’t stopped. It had just started ticking faster.

PART 2: The Black Box

The interrogation room was designed to break people. It wasn’t the temperature—which was kept at a refrigerator chill—or the harsh fluorescent lights that hummed like angry hornets. It was the silence. The acoustics were deadened so that your own breathing sounded loud, isolating you in your own body.

I sat at the metal table, hands flat on the cold surface. Havoc sat under the table, his head resting on my boots. Every muscle in his body was tense. He knew we were cornered.

For thirty minutes, I had watched my reflection in the one-way mirror. I looked like a wreck. Dust in my hair, eyes hollowed out by sleeplessness. But behind that, I saw the operator I used to be. The one who didn’t crack.

The door buzzed and clicked open.

Colonel Renwick entered first, looking grimmer than he had outside. Behind him came Dr. Lahiri, still clutching her tablet, and two people I didn’t know but instantly recognized by their type. Suits. Intelligence.

The man was Navy, wearing commander rank but carrying himself like a spook. Sharp eyes, no wasted movement. The woman was civilian, DIA by the look of her—expensive suit, eyes that assessed threats in milliseconds.

“Miss Torm,” the Commander said, sitting opposite me. He placed a tablet on the table with a precise click. “I am Commander Sokalof, Naval Intelligence. This is Agent Raina Cross, DIA. We have a problem.”

I didn’t blink. “I imagine you do. Seeing as I’m supposed to be ash in a foreign desert.”

Sokalof didn’t flinch. He tapped the tablet, spinning it around so I could see. It was a digital personnel file. My face stared back—younger, cleaner. But the rest of the file was a sea of black bars. Redacted dates. Redacted locations. The status at the top read: DECEASED – CLASSIFIED.

“According to Directive 47, you are dead,” Sokalof said calmly. “Your presence here is a paradox. An impossibility.”

“I’m flesh and blood, Commander,” I said, leaning forward. “And the dog under this table is the only witness to why I’m here.”

“The dog is unstable,” Agent Cross cut in, her voice sharp. “He’s a liability.”

A low rumble started under the table. Havoc didn’t like her tone.

“He remembers,” Dr. Lahiri spoke up from the corner, her voice small but firm. “He responded to her commands perfectly. That’s not instability. That’s loyalty.”

Renwick slammed his hand on the table, startling everyone but me and Havoc. “Enough dancing. Torm, you claim the mission was erased. You claim your team was killed for something that didn’t happen. Tell us.”

I looked Renwick in the eye. “We were sent to recover a prototype weapon system. High-value target, remote compound. Intel said it was a clean grab. We went in at 0200. My team—Ironside, Viper, Hatchet—we secured the vault. We had the package.”

I paused, the memory hitting me like a physical blow. The smell of cordite. The screaming.

“And?” Cross pressed.

“And we were set up,” I said, my voice turning to ice. “The compound knew we were coming. It wasn’t an extraction; it was an ambush. We were cut off. Close quarters. Room to room. Ironside took a round to the chest first. Viper went down trying to drag him to cover. Hatchet… Hatchet stayed behind to hold the corridor.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. Under the table, Havoc licked my ankle.

“Reaper, the other Malinois, died protecting Viper. It was just me and Havoc. We held a choke point for fourteen hours. He took shrapnel for me. I carried him three kilometers to the extraction zone.”

The room was silent.

“When we got back,” I continued, staring at Sokalof, “there was no debrief. No medical. I was put in isolation for six days. Then a suit came in—someone just like you—and told me the mission never happened. They gave me a new ID, five grand cash, and told me if I ever spoke my real name again, I’d be disappeared for real.”

“Why?” Sokalof asked. “Why cover it up?”

“Because the weapon we found wasn’t stolen,” I said. “It was sold. By a US defense contractor. To the enemy. My team walked into an illegal arms deal that went south, and instead of admitting it, the brass decided to bury the witnesses.”

Agent Cross went pale. “That’s a treasonous accusation.”

“It’s the truth,” I shot back. “And you know it. That’s why you’re here.”

Sokalof looked at Renwick. “Colonel, there’s a problem. I pulled the archived logs. There is a discrepancy. A massive data gap during the timeframe she describes.”

Renwick’s jaw tightened. He was a hard man, but he was a soldier. He knew the smell of a rat. “So we have a ghost operator and a redacted file. But we don’t have proof.”

“Yes, we do,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“Havoc,” I said.

“The dog?” Cross scoffed. “Can he testify?”

“No,” I said. “But he can carry data.”

I looked at Dr. Lahiri. “Scan him again. Not for his ID chip. Check his left shoulder, deep in the muscle tissue. Frequency 400 megahertz.”

Lahiri’s eyes went wide. She scrambled for her medical bag, pulling out a heavy-duty scanner. She knelt cautiously by the table.

“Havoc, Sasha,” I commanded softly.

Havoc stayed still as Lahiri ran the wand over his shoulder.

Beep.

Beep. Beep.

“There’s a signal,” Lahiri whispered. “It’s faint. Shielded. It’s… it’s surgical.”

“It’s a Black Box,” I said. “Standard issue for deep cover K9s in my unit. Records audio, video, and telemetry. It’s encrypted, but it’s there. And it has everything. The ambush. The orders to stand down. The faces of the men who sold us out.”

Renwick looked at Sokalof. “Get it out. Now.”

Twenty minutes later, we were in the secure lab. The chip—a tiny metallic cylinder no bigger than a grain of rice—sat in a sterile tray under a magnifying light.

Sokalof had plugged it into a ruggedized laptop. Lines of code cascaded down the screen as the decryption software chewed through the military-grade lock.

“Got it,” Sokalof muttered.

He hit play.

The main screen on the wall flickered to life. It was grainy, green-tinted night vision footage from Havoc’s perspective.

We watched my team move through the compound. We watched them breach the vault. We saw the crates marked with the logo of Aegis Defense Systems—an American contractor.

Then the chaos. The ambush. The footage shook violently as Havoc lunged, bit, and fought. We heard the screams. We heard Ironside’s last words. We heard the voice on the radio denying our request for air support.

“Negative, Granite Actual. No assets available. Clean up your own mess.”

The room in the lab was deathly silent. Agent Cross looked sick. Renwick looked murderous.

“They sold us out,” Renwick growled. “For profit.”

“It gets worse,” Sokalof said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m tracking the signal traffic from the chip. This footage… it proves the order to erase the team came from the Pentagon. High level.”

Renwick’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, and his face turned the color of ash.

“Colonel?” Lahiri asked.

“They know,” Renwick said, his voice flat. “The moment we decrypted this chip, it sent a ping. A passive beacon.”

He looked at me. “A fast-response team is inbound. ETA two hours. They aren’t coming to arrest you, Torm. They’re coming to sanitize the site.”

“Sanitize?” Lahiri asked, trembling.

“Burn it down,” I translated. “Kill everyone who saw the footage.”

Agent Cross stood up. “I can’t be a party to this. This is murder.”

“Then pick a side,” Renwick snapped. He turned to me. “Torm, you need to run.”

“I’m not leaving without the data,” I said.

“Sokalof and Lahiri are uploading it now,” Renwick said, moving into command mode. “Six different servers. The Inspector General. The New York Times. The Hague. Once it’s out, it’s out. But until then, you are a loose end.”

“They’ll kill you if I leave,” I said.

“No,” Renwick adjusted his uniform. “I’m the base commander. I can stall them. I can create bureaucratic hell. But I can’t hide you. If they find you here, they kill you, and they destroy the physical chip. You need to be the rabbit.”

“The rabbit?”

“Draw their fire,” Renwick said. “Lead them away from the base so we can finish the upload. Can you do that?”

I looked down at Havoc. He was ready. He had been ready for six months.

“Yes,” I said. “Give me a vehicle.”

“Take the maintenance truck at the north gate,” Renwick said. He handed me a key card. “And Torm?”

I paused at the door.

“Give ’em hell.”

PART 3: The Long Road Home
The sun had set, plunging the desert into a bruised purple twilight. I was behind the wheel of a battered Ford pickup, the engine straining as I pushed it to seventy on a dirt service road. Havoc sat in the passenger seat, his tactical vest strapped back on—a gift from the quartermaster on my way out.

We were ten miles north of the base when the rearview mirror lit up.

Headlights. Two vehicles. Black SUVs moving fast, eating up the distance like predators.

“Here we go, buddy,” I muttered.

Havoc let out a low growl, his eyes fixed on the side mirror. He knew.

They weren’t using sirens. This wasn’t a police chase. This was a hit squad.

I yanked the wheel hard right, taking the truck off-road. We slammed into the scrub brush, the suspension screaming. I needed rough terrain. The SUVs were fast, but they were heavy. My truck was light and I didn’t care if I wrecked it.

Bullets started to fly. Pop-pop-pop. Small arms fire. I heard the thwack of rounds hitting the tailgate.

“Get down!” I shouted.

Havoc dropped below the dashboard instantly.

I killed the headlights. Driving blind in the desert is suicide for most people, but I had the moonlight and I had the adrenaline. I wove through the cacti and boulders, trying to lose them in the dust cloud I was kicking up.

They split up. One SUV flanked left, the other stayed on my tail. They were boxing me in. Professional.

Ahead, I saw the shimmer of the dry riverbed. It was a jagged scar in the earth, filled with loose rocks. If I hit it at this speed, I’d flip.

I didn’t hit the brakes. I hit the gas.

“Hold on!”

We launched. The truck went airborne for a terrifying second, then slammed down into the riverbed with a bone-jarring crash. The windshield spiderwebbed. The engine sputtered, coughed, and died.

Silence.

Then, the sound of tires crunching gravel. The SUVs were stopping at the edge of the ridge above us. Doors opened.

“Fan out!” a voice shouted. “Thermal confirmation. Target is stationary.”

I grabbed the handgun Renwick had slipped me—a Sig Sauer with one spare mag. I kicked the door open and rolled out into the sand. Havoc was right behind me, moving like a shadow.

We scrambled behind a cluster of boulders. I checked the mag. Twelve rounds. Against at least six operators with body armor and assault rifles.

“Not good odds, Havoc,” I whispered.

He looked at me, his eyes bright in the darkness. He nudged my hand with his nose.

He had a plan.

Above us, beams of light cut through the dust. They were coming down the slope.

“She’s pinned,” the voice said. “Terminate on sight.”

Havoc tensed. He gave a short, sharp huff. The signal for Decoy.

“Go,” I whispered.

Havoc exploded from cover. But he didn’t run at them. He ran away from me, scrambling up the far side of the river bank, knocking loose rocks down, making as much noise as possible.

“Movement! Two o’clock!”

The flashlight beams swung toward the noise. Gunfire erupted, chewing up the rocks where Havoc had been a second ago.

But he was too fast. He zigzagged, drawing their fire, pulling their attention away from my position.

I broke cover.

I moved low and fast, flanking the operators who were focused on the dog. I came up on their left. Three men. Black tactical gear. No insignias.

I raised the Sig. Breathe. Squeeze.

Bang.

The first man dropped, a round in his leg. He screamed, shattering the coordination of the team.

Bang. Bang.

I put two rounds into the engine block of the nearest SUV. Steam hissed out as the radiator blew.

“Ambush!” someone yelled. “Flanking left!”

They turned toward me, but they were too late. Havoc had circled back. He hit the second operator from behind, eighty pounds of fur and teeth slamming him into the dirt. The man’s rifle flew from his hands. Havoc didn’t maul him; he disarmed him, snapping at the wrist, then bounding away before the third man could draw a bead.

It was chaos. Controlled chaos.

“Pull back!” the leader screamed. “Regroup!”

They dragged their wounded man back to the functioning SUV. They realized this wasn’t a clean up. This was a fight with a Tier One operator and a force multiplier they couldn’t track.

The SUV reversed aggressively, tires spinning, and roared away into the night. They weren’t retreating for good—they were regrouping for a heavy assault. But they were leaving.

I slumped against the boulder, the adrenaline crash hitting me like a wave. My hands were shaking.

Havoc trotted back to me. He wasn’t panting. He wasn’t scared. He sat down and licked the dust off my hand.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from Renwick.

UPLOAD COMPLETE. IG HAS THE FILES. NEWS IS BREAKING. STAND DOWN, OPERATOR. YOU’RE SAFE.

I looked at the text, the letters blurring.

“We did it,” I whispered to Havoc. “It’s over.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in his dirty, matted fur. And right there, in a dry riverbed under the indifferent stars, the ghost of Eley Torm finally came back to life.

Six months later.

The morning air at Arlington National Cemetery was crisp, smelling of damp grass and autumn leaves. It was quiet, the kind of hallowed silence that commands respect.

I stood in front of a new section of the wall. Black marble, polished to a mirror shine.

Names were etched into the stone in gold.

SSGT. MARCUS “IRONSIDE” WEBER SGT. DAVID “VIPER” KAINE CPL. JOHN “HATCHET” MILLER K9 REAPER

And below them, a line that had been added recently:

OPERATION GRANITE REACH – HONOR RESTORED.

I ran my fingers over the names. The stone was cold, but the anger inside me was gone. The executives of Aegis Defense were awaiting trial. The Pentagon officials who ordered the cover-up had resigned in disgrace. The truth was out.

“Ma’am?”

I turned. A young man in an Army dress uniform was standing there. He looked nervous.

“Sergeant Torm?” he asked.

“Just Eley,” I said. “I’m retired.”

“I… I wanted to meet you,” he said. “My brother was in Yemen three years ago. You consulted on the intel package that got his unit out of a jam. You saved his life.”

I nodded slowly. “I remember the op.”

“He told me about the news,” the young man said. “About what you did. What you exposed.” He looked down at Havoc, who was sitting at a perfect heel by my side, his coat gleaming like burnished copper, healthy and strong. “Is that him? Is that Havoc?”

“That’s him,” I said.

The soldier snapped to attention and saluted. Not me. The dog.

“Thank you,” he said. “For not letting them be forgotten.”

He walked away, leaving us alone with the ghosts.

I looked down at Havoc. “Ready to go home, buddy?”

He looked up at me, his tail giving a single, solid thump against the grass.

I wasn’t a ghost anymore. I wasn’t an erased file or a liability. I was Eley Torm. And I had the best partner in the world.

We turned and walked away from the wall, leaving the dead to rest in peace, and walked toward the truck, toward the mountains, toward a life that finally belonged to us.