Chapter 1. Duty Calls Staff Sergeant Roy Donovan stared at the framed photo on his desk in the dimly lit barracks of Forward Operating Base Endurance. The glossy 5×7 showed his wife Bridget smiling next to their children, Max, 12, and Lily, 9, outside their modest Virginia home. The desert sand had scratched the glass, much like time had worn at his marriage over three consecutive deployments. Roy ran his calloused fingers over his wife’s face. Once, her smile had been genuine.

Now, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her laugh on their video calls. Their conversations had grown shorter, her excuses more frequent. Thirty minutes to wheels up, Donovan called Sergeant Major Willis from the doorway.

Intelligence briefing just came in. It’s a high-value target this time. Roy carefully placed the photo in his rucksack.

I’ll be right there, sir. At 35, Roy had spent 14 years in Army Intelligence, a specialist in counterterrorism operations with a particular talent for information extraction and analysis. His ability to piece together seemingly unrelated intelligence fragments had earned him the nickname The Bloodhound among his unit.

That same analytical mind now pieced together his wife’s increasingly suspicious behavior. On his last home leave six months ago, he’d noticed unfamiliar cologne in their bathroom. Bridget had dismissed it as a sample from the department store.

He’d found receipts for restaurants in towns an hour away that she’d never mentioned visiting. When questioned, she claimed girls’ nights out with co-workers he’d never heard of before. You’re paranoid, Roy, she’d said.

That’s what happens when you spend your life looking for enemies. Perhaps she was right. Fourteen years hunting terrorists had made him suspicious by nature.

Still, Roy couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong at home while he was fighting someone else’s war. The mission that night was to extract information from a suspected weapons smuggler in a remote village. As Roy geared up, his satellite phone buzzed.

A text from Bridget, don’t call tonight. Taking kids to mom’s. Bad reception there.

Her mother lived in downtown Richmond. The reception was perfect there. Another lie.

Three days later, Roy intercepted communications revealing the location of a high-value insurgent leader. The subsequent raid was a success, earning Roy a commendation. As his team celebrated, he retreated to his quarters and pulled up the home security app on his tablet, the one Bridget didn’t know he’d installed before his deployment.

The bedroom camera showed a man’s jacket slung over his reading chair. At 2.14am Virginia time, Bridget entered the frame with a man Roy had never seen before. They were laughing, drinking wine, his special occasion wine, from their wedding crystal.

Roy watched, stone-faced, as the stranger kissed his wife. He didn’t turn away when they moved to the bed, his bed. Instead, he recorded everything, his tactical mind already formulating the intelligence-gathering operation of his life.

When the commanding officer offered Roy leave following the successful mission, he declined. I need to prepare first, sir, he said, his voice devoid of emotion. The enemy thinks they have the advantage.

I intend to change that.

Chapter 2. Gathering Intelligence. You sure about this, man? Louis Frost, Roy’s closest friend and the unit and communications specialist, looked concerned as he helped Roy set up secure channels on his personal devices.

I’m not making accusations without evidence, Roy replied, checking the encrypted file transfer. That’s not how we operate, Louis whistled. The bloodhound, turning his skills on his own home.

Never thought I’d see the day. Neither did I. For the next eight weeks, while continuing his official duties, Roy conducted a covert investigation into his own life. He remotely accessed their joint accounts, cell phone records, and home security footage.

He set up algorithms to flag patterns, hotel charges, unusual restaurant bills, unaccounted time periods. The evidence mounted. The man was Perry Wexler, a pharmaceutical sales representative who had moved to their neighborhood 11 months ago, shortly after Roy’s second deployment began.

According to Facebook, he’d quickly ingratiated himself with the community, volunteering at the same school fundraisers as Bridget, joining the same gym. Their affair had begun approximately seven months ago, coinciding with Bridget’s sudden interest in fitness and book club meetings that ran suspiciously late. The home security cameras revealed he’d been in their house at least 36 times, sometimes while the children were at school, sometimes late at night when they were asleep upstairs.

Most disturbing to Roy were the recorded conversations about their future together. Roy will be deployed for another four months, Bridget had said, curled against Perry in Roy’s recliner. After this divorce, with his military record, he’ll be lucky to get monthly visitation.

The courts always favor the You’re sure about this? Perry had asked, caressing her arm. Divorcing a war hero won’t make you popular around here. He’s no hero to me, Bridget had replied coldly.

He chose the military over us years ago. Besides, we’ve covered our tracks. He’ll never know about us until I’m ready to tell him.

The final straw came when Roy discovered text messages about Perry moving into the house after the divorce, the house Roy had purchased with his combat pay and family separation allowance. What Bridget and Perry didn’t know was that Roy’s security clearance and specialized training gave him access to resources beyond the reach of ordinary civilians. His intelligence gathering net widened, and what he discovered about Perry Wexler made his blood run cold.

Perry wasn’t just a pharmaceutical rep. His record showed inconsistencies that Roy recognized from his counterintelligence work, the hallmarks of a fabricated identity. More troubling were the large cash deposits into offshore accounts tied to aliases Roy uncovered through military database access.

When Roy finally confided the full scope of his findings to Lewis, his friend’s face paled. This isn’t just an affair, Lewis said. This guy’s using your wife to access something.

Something valuable. Not just my wife, Roy replied quietly. My children.

My home. My life. He closed the laptop, and I believe he’s connected to the very networks we’ve been tracking here.

Holy shit, Roy. That would mean. That would mean this isn’t just about a cheating wife.

It’s a matter of national security.