Page 1 of Smokescreen

CHAPTER 1

NINE YEARS AGO

Olive Sterling blinked and glanced at the glowing red numbers on her alarm clock.

Two-thirty a.m.? Who was talking loud enough to wake her at this time of night?

She squinted, wondering if the sounds had been a dream.

Then she heard the voices again.

No, that hadn’t been a dream.

Someone was having a heated argument downstairs.

Two male voices echoed through her family’s two-story home.

Or was that three?

Olive held her breath, not wanting to miss a thing as she listened.

One of the voices was her father’s. She’d recognize his deep tone anywhere.

But who would he be arguing with? Not someone in her family—it was just Mom and Olive’s twin sisters. No men lived here other than Dad.

Quietly, Olive threw her covers off and crept across the floor.

She needed to know what was going on.

She cracked the door open. The voices became clearer, and snippets of the conversation drifted up to her.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” an unfamiliar man said.

“I’ve got this under control.” That was her dad. Definitely her dad.

“Youbetterhave this under control . . . or therewillbe consequences.”

Olive’s heart beat harder. Consequences? That sounded like a threat.

“Back off,” her dad said, a growl to his voice. “If I said I’ve got this, then I’ve got this.”

What in the world was her dad talking about?

Her family had moved to this small Texas town only four months ago so her father could take a job at a local bank.

Moving often had always been a part of her life, almost as if they were a military family.

Except her dad wasn’t in the military, and he seemed to switch careers wherever they went. As well as identities.

Olive had thought this was normal, what every family did.

Until she got to know actual normal people and realized that her family was anything but.

There was clearly more going on here than she understood.

More conversation murmured downstairs, but it was softer now. Olive couldn’t make out the words.

Yet she desperately wanted to hear. She wanted answers. Wanted to understand.