The safe house was located in suburban Montana, deliberately chosen for its distance from both coasts and its population's tendency toward privacy-respecting isolationism. Ral—now officially Jacob Miller—stood in the kitchen of their newly assigned ranch house while Maya explored her bedroom upstairs with three-year-old enthusiasm that found wonder in ordinary furniture.
"The school district here is excellent," Chen explained, reviewing documentation spread across the kitchen table. "Maya starts preschool under her new name—Emma Miller—in two weeks. Gives you time to establish cover stories with neighbors about relocating from Seattle for work opportunities."
"What work opportunities?" Louis—now Sarah Miller—asked, her journalist's instinct for narrative consistency demanding plausible d
