I lock the door before I unfold the letter.
Not because the lock would stop anyone determined, but because ritual matters when the truth inside a page has the power to rearrange everything around it.
The paper is creased from being folded and refolded too many times, Rachel’s handwriting sharp and narrow across the surface. Three names. Two patrol route changes. Dates. Times. Notes in the margin that look almost casual until you read them twice.
I sit on the edge of my bed and read it again slowly, this time not as a friend searching for reassurance, but as a strategist looking for fracture points.
The two route changes match recent “accidents.”
A supply miscount near the western boundary.
A patrol overlap that created a gap near the ridge.
Both dismissed publicly as procedural nois
