Then I saw the detail that made my pulse stop.
Pinned to the man’s jacket was a small silver angel.
For a moment, the room belonged to another time.
A canvas tent. Red dust. The stale smell of coffee left too long on a heating plate. A radio whispering in my ear while dawn turned the eastern horizon gray.
And a voice saying, *You’re clear, Angel.*
I had not seen that particular pin since the night we lost Daniel Mercer.
Not Elaine Mercer. The deputy director sitting across from me.
Daniel Mercer had been our communications specialist. Twenty-six years old, Kentucky-born, with a laugh that arrived before he did. He carried a silver angel on the inside of his field jacket because his little sister had given it to him before his first deployment.
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