“And you repaid that mercy by abusing a sixteen-year-old child who had done nothing but love her family.”
Martin wept into the snow, his hands clawing at his cashmere sweater:
“Daniel… please! Where is Claire?! Let me speak to my daughter! Claire will fix this! She knows I was only joking with Sophie!”
United States Attorney Marcus Cooper leaned into the camera frame, holding up the certified extradition manifest from the United States District Court in Alexandria:
“Your daughter Claire is currently in federal custody at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Martin,” Cooper announced with chilling finality:
“She was intercepted at zero-two-hundred hours on Christmas morning attempting an armed treasonous breach of the Department of the Navy’s classified continuity archives beneath our headquarters.”
“She has been formally indicted on eighty-four counts of Capital High Treason under Article Three, Seditious Conspiracy to Usurp Sovereign Defense Bedrock under Title 18, and Felony Child Endangerment.”
“She will spend the next thirty-five years in an eight-by-ten subterranean concrete cell.”
Martin’s phone slipped from his paralyzed fingers, tumbling into the slush on the driveway, the screen cracking across the glass:
*CRACK.*
Behind him, Linda Collins shrieked from the porch as three federal marshals mounted the steps with an emergency civil forfeiture attachment order, sealing the front entrance of the Indian Hill estate under Title Fifty War Powers!
The era of the Collins family dynasty was permanently closed.
***
Fourteen months later.
The early autumn sun broke over the high, landscaped red-sandstone ramparts and the wide, sparkling blue expanse of the Potomac River gorge outside our restored ancestral family homestead on Mercer Ridge in Great Falls, Virginia, burning off the sweet morning mist that clung to the sweeping clover lawns and the blooming native dogwoods along our front terrace.
The air was sixty-four degrees, smelling of sun-cured cedar shingles, river spray, fresh-baked blueberry scones, and the clean, honest ozone of an un-broken American sky.
