That evening, Mom locked every door and checked every window before bringing an old metal box from the back of her closet. Inside were medals, classified documents, a faded squadron patch, and a photograph of her standing beside Admiral Carter and several other pilots. One man’s face had been scratched out with black ink. When I asked who he was, Mom stared at the photograph and said, “Someone who should still be dead.” She explained that before retiring, she had belonged to a classified unit working on a technology called Ghostwing. The system could temporarily bend detection signals around an aircraft, making it almost impossible to track. They had believed the technology was destroyed years ago, but the man in the parking lot, Elias Voss, had once been part of their team. He had betrayed them and supposedly died in a crash over the Black Sea twelve years earlier.

Then the kitchen phone rang. Mom answered without saying hello, listened for several seconds, and turned completely pale. Admiral Carter had disappeared shortly after the assembly. His driver had been found unconscious, and security cameras had mysteriously stopped working. Mom grabbed the metal box and told me to pack a bag. We drove through the rain for nearly two hours before reaching a secluded cabin hidden among the trees. A woman with a shotgun opened the door and greeted Mom as if she had been expecting her. Her name was Aunt June, although Mom had previously told me she lived in Arizona. Behind a movable bookshelf, June revealed a hidden room filled with radios, maps, photographs, and surveillance equipment. At the center of the wall were pictures of Admiral Carter and Elias Voss. June explained that someone was rebuilding Ghostwing, and now that Carter had publicly recognized Mom, the people responsible knew exactly where to find us.