After the Missing Commander’s Wife Returned, She Had Me Dig Up a Nonexistent Iron Box

Three months after his wife Sophie vanished during a secret reconnaissance mission, a woman wearing her exact face walks back into Ethan's home and sits down to a bowl of wontons. She asks him to dig up a tin box they supposedly buried under the old locust tree years ago — a box that never existed, a story only Sophie and he ever knew. When he hesitates, she insists the military needs it urgently, that it concerns front-line secrets.

Ethan hides his terror behind a smile. Every habit, every mole, every scar matches, yet the box proves she is an impostor. He suspects the real Sophie was captured and tortured, and that she invented the box to mislead the enemy. With the village militia away hauling grain and his eleven-year-old daughter due home from boarding school, he must stall the spy through the night without a weapon or an ally.

By dawn the village crowds in to welcome the returning war hero, and the impostor plays her part flawlessly. Ethan has one day to warn someone before the digging begins.