Echoes of Honor

From the back cover

Expelled from the police academy, Sarah Sterling turns to the streets the next day to go undercover inside the largest crime syndicate in the Southern state. Her boyfriend leaves her, her best friend cuts ties, and her father, Arthur Sterling, disowns her, declaring he has no daughter. For seven years she barely sleeps, and when the syndicate uncovers her identity, she is tortured to death after sending out the core evidence.

Her soul drifts back to her father, now white-haired and hunched. A neighbor, Mr. Miller, taunts him about his absent daughter, and Arthur curses her, saying her death would be her greatest contribution to the Sterling family. Yet at home he unfolds the police academy admission letter he has kept for over a decade and reads her name aloud.

Once he carried that letter through the neighborhood, proud of the girl who got in. Now he hides indoors, bent under the neighbors' mockery, while she watches unseen and whispers an apology he cannot hear.