Chapter 1
POV: Owen
They said I needed help. Again.
Funny thing was, I was usually the one people called when everything else had already failed.
I’d heard it before — from field commanders, agency doctors, a drunk squad mate with half a liver and a medal he didn’t deserve. It always ended the same. A psych eval. A suspension. A half-assed prescription from someone who’d never seen a throat torn open by shrapnel or watched a child walk through a minefield like it was her backyard.
This time, it came with a card.
White. Minimal. Embossed.
Dr. Lilian Hanningan, Ph.D.
Trauma Reprocessing and Memory Integration Specialist
Private practice – by referral only
Agent Connors — my former team lead turned suit-and-tie handler — slid it across the table like it was my last hope or my last warning. Maybe both.
“You’ve got two options, Fischer,” he said. “Take the sessions. Or take a permanent leave.”
I stared at the card. No logo. No agency seal. Just her name.
I should’ve tossed it. Walked out. Told him to shove his goodwill therapy bullshit straight up his clean-shaven ass. But I didn’t. Not because I believed in it — hell no — but because I was tired. Tired of red tape. Tired of shadows. Tired of waking up soaked in sweat and blood that wasn’t mine.
Walking away has never been my problem. Staying has always been the harder choice.
So I made the call.
And that’s how I found myself standing in front of a private brick building on the edge of Georgetown, staring at a door that looked more like a spa entrance than a shrink’s office. White paint. Frosted glass. No guards. No cameras.
Just a name etched in silver:
Dr. Lilian Hanningan
I almost turned around.
And then the door opened.
And I forgot how to breathe.
That alone told me she was dangerous.
Her face was so beautiful that seemed familiar.
She was nothing like what I expected. No wire-rimmed glasses or tight-bunned shrink. No clinical detachment.
She looked like… hell, I don’t even know. A memory I didn’t know I had. A woman too young to have seen the kind of darkness I carry. Too soft to handle it. Except—there was something in her eyes. Not pity. Not fear.
Something that held.
Hair like honeyed chestnut, long and loose around her shoulders. Skin pale, luminous. Barely any makeup. A soft blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers that hugged curves I had no business noticing.
She was beautiful.
Beautiful women were a distraction. Distractions got people killed.
Not the kind of beautiful you meet in bars. The kind that undoes you without even trying. The kind that feels like mercy after a war.
But it was her eyes that got me.
Big and blue — not the bright kind, not the clear kind. Blue like the ocean after a storm, when the clouds haven’t fully passed and everything’s heavy and deep and endless. The kind of blue that made you want to drown. The kind that made you want to stay under.
Like I could look at them for the rest of my life.
And like they could crack me open if I let them.
“Agent Fischer?” she said, her voice calm. Steady. Warm like heat soaking into old bones.
My mouth was dry.
“You’re not what I expected,” I muttered.
She smiled faintly. “I get that a lot.”
She stepped back, holding the door open for me, and I hesitated. My boots didn’t belong on that polished wood floor. My kind usually didn’t walk into places like this unless something had gone wrong. My presence didn’t belong in her soft-lit office with its bookshelves and velvet chairs and scent of lavender and something else — something clean.
I belonged in the dirt. In shadows. In blood.
But I walked in anyway.
Because Connors would keep riding my ass if I didn’t. Because something inside me — small and buried — wanted to know what it would feel like to be seen by someone who hadn’t already written me off.
Because I couldn’t stop looking at her.
And that scared the shit out of me.
I’d spent years mastering control. She felt like a variable I couldn’t calculate.I didn’t like variables.
She led me into a room that smelled like cedar and soft things I couldn’t name. No steel. No stale coffee. No echo of orders shouted over comms.
Just a bookshelf lined with psychology texts, a soft gray couch, and two chairs angled toward each other like a setup for a quiet interrogation.
“Anywhere you’re comfortable,” she said.
Nowhere. But I sat anyway.
She took the chair across from me, crossing one leg over the other, tablet in her lap, stylus poised. “I want you to know,” she began, “the only information I received about you is that you’re struggling with chronic insomnia. That’s it.”
I snorted. “They didn’t include the breakdown or the body count?”
She didn’t flinch. “No. Just the insomnia.”
“Then they’re more optimistic than I thought.”
Dr. Hanningan didn’t respond to the sarcasm. She folded her hands, composed, like she’d heard this before. “In my experience, chronic insomnia — especially in military personnel — is less about poor sleep hygiene and more about unresolved trauma responses. Your body isn’t failing you, Agent Fischer. It’s protecting you.”
My jaw clenched. I looked away.
She continued, her voice steady but soft. “Your brain isn’t able to distinguish between what happened, what’s happening, and what might happen. When that boundary collapses, it treats memory as a threat. And for someone trained to remain alert in high-risk environments… that hypervigilance becomes a survival loop.”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re not broken,” she said gently. “You’re just stuck in a loop your brain believes is keeping you alive.”
Silence pressed thick between us. I stared at a bookshelf, eyes scanning rows of titles I couldn’t focus on. My hands stayed closed fists in my lap.
“I usually use hypnosis,” she added, like it was nothing. “To guide the patient back to a specific moment where the body learned that danger was permanent. We work there. Slowly. Carefully. Not to relive it — to resolve it.”
I turned my head back toward her. “Hypnosis.”
Her lips curved just slightly. “I know how that sounds. You wouldn’t be the first skeptic.”
“I’m not a skeptic. I’m just not big on giving up control.”
“You wouldn’t be.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That an official psychological assessment?”
“It’s an observation.”
She was calm. Too calm. And despite myself, I admired it. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t tiptoe. She didn’t meet me like I was fragile. She met me like I was real.
She didn’t look afraid of me. That was either a mistake—or she understood exactly what she was walking into.
“I’ve worked with other military patients,” she added. “Special Forces. Rangers. Deltas.”
“Impressive. You look twelve.”
She smiled again, and it reached her eyes this time. “I get that a lot too.”
“You always this confident with men who don’t like being analyzed?”
“I started college at sixteen. Published my first paper at nineteen. Trained under two of the top neurotrauma experts in the country before I turned twenty-four. I’ve been doing this long enough to earn my stripes — even if they don’t come stitched on a uniform.”
I studied her. Her voice didn’t shake. Her posture didn’t shift. She meant every word.
“Look,” she said, steady and sharp. “You’re not my first patient. And you’re definitely not my most difficult. I’ve worked with plenty of skeptics. Some walked out that door before we even started. But most of them came back.”
She leaned in just slightly — not aggressive, but intentional. I didn’t lean back. I held her gaze, testing which one of us would break first. “Because I was their last resort. And I made a difference. Every time.”
I didn’t move.
“I know I’m not your first choice, Agent Fischer. But don’t make me your last.”
Then, quieter — a challenge wrapped in calm:
“Give me one month. Four weeks. If nothing changes, you walk. No hard feelings.”
I leaned back slowly, considering.
“What, no psych eval? No trust fall?”
Her tone stayed even. “I’m not here to diagnose you, Agent Fischer. I’m here to help you sleep.”
I don’t know why I said yes.
Maybe because I was tired.
Maybe because something in me — the part I buried under blood and silence — believed her.
Maybe because her eyes were still watching me like they saw me.
“Fine,” I muttered. “One month.”
She nodded, like she already knew I’d agree.
And that was the first mistake.
She didn’t waste time.
After a few soft questions about sleep, patterns, triggers — answers I gave in grunts and shrugs — she shifted gears.
“Would you be open,” she said, “to trying something now?”
My eyes narrowed. “Now?”
“You’re already here.”
“You always ambush patients on the first day?”
She smiled. “Only the ones who walk in with walls this high.”
I didn’t answer.
“It’s not what you’re imagining,” she said. “You’ll stay fully conscious. You’ll know where you are, who I am, what you’re doing. It’s not about control, Agent Fischer. It’s about access. We’re going to ask your mind to show us something it’s been holding onto.”
“I don’t remember my dreams,” I muttered.
“This isn’t dreaming. It’s locating the file you buried too deep to find on your own.”
I let out a slow breath. “Do it,” I said. “But don’t think for a second you’re in control.”
She nodded and adjusted her tone, her posture. Her voice slowed. Calmed.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “Keep your feet grounded. Hands relaxed.”
I didn’t relax. But I obeyed.
“Now,” she continued, “I want you to imagine the moment before sleep. The exact second your body starts to let go. But don’t let it fall. Just stay there. Still. Aware.”
Her words didn’t sound like a voice anymore. They sounded like movement — like something inside my chest turning over.
“Your mind may show you a scene. A sound. A color. Don’t fight it. Just watch.”
I was about to scoff — when it hit me.
The smell.
Sand. Diesel. Copper.
Not here. There.
I was on a rooftop in Balkh Province, breathing through grit, listening to gunfire echo off metal walls. I hadn’t thought about that day in years — not since—
I opened my eyes. My hand had already gone to my thigh—muscle memory, searching for a weapon that wasn’t there.
She was still watching me. Calm. Present. Like she knew.
I blinked once. My hands were trembling.
No fucking way.
“I was awake the whole time,” I said flatly.
“I told you you would be.”
“That wasn’t a memory I think about.”
She tilted her head, curious. “But it came up anyway.”
I didn’t respond.
She stood and walked over to her calendar. “Same time next week?”
“I don’t take orders.”
She smiled without turning. “That’s fine. I’ll call it a recommendation.”
She jotted something down, then looked back. “Wednesday at ten. You’ll be here.”
And damn me — I knew she was right.
That night, I didn’t sleep.
Not that I ever did — not really.
I poured two fingers of whiskey, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the floor like it might offer something I hadn’t seen before.
Her voice stayed with me.
So did her eyes. Those rain-soaked blue eyes that saw more than I wanted them to.
And that memory — the one I’d buried so deep it hadn’t surfaced in years — clear as glass now. Just from her voice.
What the hell had Connors gotten me into?
And why did I want to go back?
I almost didn’t notice it.
The small statue sitting near her bookshelf. Bronze. Smooth. Maybe abstract — a curled figure wrapped in its own arms. I hadn’t paid attention to it during the session.
But something about it itched now.
The base was too thick.
Too perfect.
Too government-issued.
