“Daaaddddd!!!”

Galvanized by Kit’s shrill yell, Broker sprinted over to the door. “What?”

Kit stood in the open door, glowering, clamping her nostrils together with a thumb and index finger. She pointed with her other hand into the all-season porch. Broker went in and immediately saw and smelled a thick stratum of cigarette smoke hanging in the air.

Broker had been off tobacco for three months. Nina had agreed never to indulge her cigarettes inside the house, a rule she hadn’t violated since they took up residence in late August, when she cleared the base hospital at Fort Bragg. He followed the smoke to where it was thickest, through the open door into the kitchen.

Major Nina Pryce, U.S. Army, nominally “retired” and on extended sick leave from government service, sat at the table, still in the sweat suit and New Balance shoes she wore on her morning run. She leaned forward, elbow braced like someone arm-wrestling an invisible opponent. An inch of ash dangled from the end of the American Spirit jammed in the corner of her mouth. A breakfast bowl on the table held four or five butts mashed into the Total cereal and milk. Another cigarette butt floated in a coffee cup.

And then he saw it, in her right hand.

Broker reacted instantly. He gently shoved Kit back into the porch, closed the door in one swift movement, and lunged into the room. Nina, staring straight ahead, seemingly unaware of his presence, was raising and lowering her right arm, in the manner prescribed to strengthen the damaged muscles. But instead of the two-pound weight she always used, this afternoon she was raising and lowering her.45-caliber Colt semiautomatic-in which he saw no vacant cavity in the handgrip.