1
Sunday morning. I sit at the kitchen table without coffee.
Emma moves through her routines. Checking surgery schedules, organizing the twins’ week, the familiar choreography of family life. She doesn’t ask about the trip. Doesn’t mention the dark circles under my eyes.
Twenty years of marriage teaches you when not to ask questions.
Jake spreads homework across the counter. Sophie practices scales in the living room. Sunday sounds in a house that feels different now.
I walk to my study, pull books from the shelves. Tax law. Behavioral psychology. Corporate analysis. The professional library of someone who used to have a different career.
Behind them, spine cracked and pages yellow, I find what I’m looking for.
The Art of War. College edition. My name in faded ink on the first page, notes in margins from a twenty-year-old who thought he understood strategy.
I open to a random page.
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive.”
The irony isn’t lost on me.
I turn pages, reading annotations I barely remember making. Young man’s theories about conflict and victory, written before I learned that some wars aren’t meant to be won.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
2
Dr. Ellen Reeves practices from her home office. Converted basement, two streets over from Riverdale Elementary. Discrete referrals only.
I found her name through medical contacts. Emma’s colleague mentioned her once - trauma recovery for professionals who need privacy.
“Memory gaps happen,” she says, reviewing my intake form. “Usually for good reason.”
Small room, soft lighting, the scent of eucalyptus from a diffuser. She settles into her chair across from mine.
“Prague. Seven years ago. I remember arriving, remember leaving. Nothing between.”
She nods. “Psychological or chemical suppression?”
“Don’t know.”
“Ready?”
I close my eyes.
Her voice becomes rhythmic. Breathing exercises, countdown, the standard techniques.
The room fades.
-----
Hotel lobby in Prague. Rain on windows. I’m there for energy sector consulting, routine behavioral assessment.
A man approaches. Early thirties, dark hair, nervous energy. Viktor something. Research director.
“We need to talk,” he says.
Hotel bar. He orders wine, barely touches it. Keeps checking his phone.
“There’s a situation,” he says. “Personal. My daughter’s been taken.”
He shows me a photograph. Young girl, dark hair, serious expression.
“They want technical information. Things I have access to.”
Classic leverage scenario. Family versus professional duty.
I give him the standard analysis. Kidnapper psychology, negotiation strategies, risk assessment.
But something feels wrong. His reactions don’t match the emotional profile.
The scene shifts. His hotel room later that night. I’m there with files, recommendations.
Viktor is different now. Calmer. The nervous energy gone.
“There is no daughter,” he says.
The memory fractures. Static.
White noise pulling me back to Dr. Reeves’s office.
-----
I wake tasting metal, shirt damp with sweat.
“What did you see?” she asks.
“A lie. Prague was a lie.”
“About what?”
I think about Viktor’s face when he dropped the act. The change from victim to something else.
“I don’t know. But whatever happened there…” I pause. “That’s why he knows me.”
“The person you’re dealing with now?”
“Viktor. Has to be.”
But I still don’t understand why. What happened in that hotel room after the memory cuts out. What I did. What was done to me.
Why Prague turned a stranger into an enemy.
3
Monday morning. I drive to the hardware store instead of the library.
Purchase: drain cleaner, light bulbs, picture wire. Items anyone might need. I pay cash, pocket the receipt.
But I’m watching reflections in the store windows. Cataloging faces. The man in the garden center who followed me through three aisles.
All warfare is based on deception.
-----
Tuesday. Grocery shopping with Emma. Routine errand, but I take a longer route through produce. Circle back past the pharmacy.
Same man from yesterday. Different clothes, same shoes.
He doesn’t buy anything. Just moves when I move.
Emma notices nothing. Good.
-----
Wednesday. I tell Emma I’m meeting a client for coffee.
Instead, I drive to the mall. Park near Sears, walk to the food court, sit where I can see three entrances.
Twenty minutes. No familiar faces.
I buy a newspaper, leave through Macy’s, exit through a different parking area.
Drive home via residential streets.
Small test. Small victory.
-----
Thursday evening. Emma’s in surgery late. Kids at after-school programs.
I sit in my study with *The Art of War*.
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness.”
They expect me home by six. Dinner prep, homework help, suburban father routines.
I stay in my study until seven-thirty.
Let them wonder where I am for ninety minutes.
Let them adapt to uncertainty.
-----
Friday morning. Coffee shop I’ve never visited, ten miles from home.
I order, sit by the window, open the sports section.
But I’m learning their faces. The watchers. How they position themselves. How they communicate.
One by car. One on foot. Always two, never the same pair twice.
Professional. But not invisible.
Not anymore.
4
Saturday night. I wake at 3:17 AM.
The smell hits me first. Antiseptic. Bleach. Something metallic underneath.
In the dream, I was sitting in a white room. Not a hotel. Medical equipment along the walls. Monitors displaying vital signs that weren’t mine.
Viktor was there, but younger. Unmarked.
And screaming.
I slip out of bed, careful not to wake Emma. Walk to the kitchen, pour water I don’t want to drink.
My hands are shaking.
-----
Sunday afternoon. Jake beats me at chess in twelve moves.
“You’re not paying attention, Dad.”
“Sorry. Distracted.”
But I keep hearing the sound from the dream. Not Viktor’s voice as I know it now - controlled, calculating. This was raw. Animal. Pain beyond endurance.
“Your move,” Jake says.
I stare at the board, but I’m thinking about white rooms and equipment I couldn’t identify.
And my voice in the dream, calm and professional: “Increase the dosage.”
-----
Monday evening. Emma’s reading in bed when I join her.
“Long day?” she asks.
“Couldn’t sleep last night.”
She marks her place in the medical journal. “Bad dreams?”
“Something like that.”
She studies my face in the lamplight. “Want to talk about it?”
I think about Viktor’s screaming. About my voice giving instructions to someone I couldn’t see. About waking up with the taste of metal in my mouth.
“Just stress. Work stuff.”
Emma nods, doesn’t push. Returns to her reading about pediatric cardiac procedures while I lie awake, afraid to close my eyes.
-----
Tuesday, 4:23 AM. The dream again.
Different angle this time. I’m standing beside the equipment now, not sitting. Viktor is strapped to something - a chair, a table. Medical restraints.
His eyes find mine. Clear. Aware. Desperate.
“Please,” he says. His voice is different. Younger. No accent yet. “You don’t understand what this will do.”
But I’m not listening. I’m watching readings on a screen. Heart rate. Brain activity. Other measurements I can’t interpret.
Someone else in the room - shadow in my peripheral vision. Giving orders I follow without question.
“Subject is approaching threshold,” I hear myself say.
Viktor’s eyes never leave mine. Even as the screaming starts again.
I wake tasting copper.
In the bathroom mirror, my reflection looks like a stranger.
-----
Wednesday morning. Coffee tastes like metal. Emma notices I’m not eating.
“You look pale,” she says.
“Didn’t sleep well.”
“Maybe see Dr. Patterson. Get something to help.”
I nod, but I know medication won’t fix this.
The dreams are showing me something I need to remember.
Something I need to understand.
Even if understanding destroys whatever’s left of who I thought I was.
5
Thursday morning. I call Dr. Reeves from a gas station pay phone.
“The dreams are getting worse.”
“Friday afternoon,” she says. “Two o’clock.”
-----
Friday. Her basement office feels smaller. I sit by the wall, watching the door.
“New dreams?” she asks.
I nod.
“Tell me.”
“Water. Running water. Like a shower, but…” I pause. “Wrong sound. Too much pressure.”
She makes notes.
“Viktor’s there, but he can’t speak. Something in his mouth. Tube, maybe.”
“Where are you?”
“Behind glass. Watching. Taking notes.”
Her pen stops moving. “Notes about what?”
“Don’t know. Numbers. Measurements.”
I close my eyes, try to remember more.
“Someone’s talking. Giving instructions. But I can’t see them.”
“Male? Female?”
“Male. Accent. Not Viktor’s. Different.”
-----
Saturday, 4:15 AM. A new dream wakes me.
Viktor’s face, but wrong. Swollen. One eye won’t open. His jaw hangs at an angle that makes my stomach turn.
In the dream, I’m adjusting something. A dial. A setting. Each adjustment makes him flinch.
Someone behind me says, “Optimal response threshold achieved.”
I write it down in a notebook I can’t see clearly.
Viktor tries to speak around whatever’s in his mouth. The sound comes out broken.
I wake up biting my tongue.
-----
Sunday evening. Emma’s reading in bed.
“You’re grinding your teeth,” she says.
“Am I?”
“Last few nights. Maybe get a mouth guard.”
I nod, but I’m thinking about Viktor’s jaw. The wrong angle. The broken sounds.
“Everything okay?” Emma asks.
“Just work stress.”
She returns to her book. Medical journals. Procedures for fixing broken things.
I lie awake until morning, afraid to close my eyes.
6
Monday morning. I take the back route to the coffee shop, the one through the industrial district.
No blue sedan. No familiar faces. But something else.
A white van, parked behind the auto parts store. Same van I saw Friday near the library. Thursday outside Dr. Reeves’s neighborhood.
I order coffee, sit where I can watch through the window.
The van doesn’t move for twenty minutes. Driver reading something, occasionally looking up. But not at me.
At the auto parts store.
-----
Tuesday. I drive past the van’s location from yesterday. Gone.
But I find it later, parked across from Riverdale Elementary. Same position relative to the building. Same angle.
The driver isn’t watching me.
He’s watching the school.
-----
Wednesday evening. I sit in my study with *The Art of War*.
“Know your enemy and know yourself.”
I pull out a map of Riverdale, mark the locations where I’ve seen surveillance. Blue sedans, the white van, foot teams.
They’re not just watching me.
They’re mapping my territory. My routines. The places I care about.
The school. Dr. Reeves’s house. Emma’s hospital. The routes between them.
But there’s something else. A consistency in positioning that suggests something I haven’t considered.
They’re not just observing.
They’re preparing.
-----
Thursday morning. I drive to the elementary school early, before my surveillance usually arrives.
Park where I can see the main entrance, the crossing guard post, the playground.
At 7:15, the white van appears. Parks in the same spot as before.
But this time I’m close enough to see what the driver is really doing.
He’s not reading. He’s sketching. Drawing sight lines, noting distances, marking entry points.
The kind of detailed reconnaissance you do before an operation.
Not surveillance.
Target assessment.
-----
Friday afternoon. Dr. Reeves cancels our session. Family emergency, her message says.
I drive past her house anyway. Her car’s in the driveway. Lights on inside.
No emergency.
Someone got to her.
I sit in my car three blocks away, thinking about the van’s positioning. The sketches. The methodical mapping of every place I go.
“All warfare is based on deception.”
But who’s deceiving whom?
I’ve been so focused on evading surveillance that I missed what they were really doing.
Building a target package.
Not for me.
For everyone I care about.