“Master Sergeant Miller.”

“He runs the basement archives in the Annex.”

“He was your father’s chief clerk for ten years.”

The name sent a familiar ache through my chest.

My father had been dead for three years, but his shadow still hung over every corridor of this city.

“Miller is loyal,” I said.

“He won’t talk to the liaison office.”

“He is also seventy years old and waiting for his retirement,” Albright warned.

“If we pull him into this, we risk everything he has worked for.”

“I will talk to him,” I said.

“He knows me.”

“He remembers me from when I was a child.”

Albright closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them.

“If you do this, you do it alone,” he said.

“I cannot protect you if the Provost Marshal gets a warrant.”

“I don’t need your protection, General,” I said.

“I just need forty-eight hours.”

He reached down, took his dark folder, and slowly slipped it back under his arm.

“I will delay the committee’s liaison for as long as I can,” he said.

“But they are already tracking my movements.”