A special thanks to those of you who are reading or finished ‘Buried Ladies’. I’m excited by your feedback and I’m making changes you suggested. A current copy of the book is always available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlZ7K6xsTSVTXFWM2d0N2lHa0U/view?usp=sharing.
Plus, we’re now on Goodreads and would love to connect with your there (you can select the link above or the image):
For those of you who are not already on Goodreads (and you should be), it is a social network linking readers and writers. It’s a place to put up reviews of books you’ve read, get input from readers about books you’d like to read, and engage with writers — ask them questions about their writing, upcoming books, or anything else.
Scars of the Past
Meanwhile, I’m nearly 50% finished with the next book in the series, ‘Scars of the Past’, can you believe it?
The new book is called ‘Scars of the Past’ and features Jaime and Estella from Book #1, plus our FBI friends, John Boyd, Fernandez and Dillon. A host of new characters join them in fighting cyberterrorism, as people begin dying in and around DC, where Jaime and Estella now make their home (remember, they’re in witness protection after the Gulf Cartel caper). They’re now Jacob and Esther Mainz.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost Joan, although she might show up later in ‘Scar of the Past’. Let’s hope so. I liked her.
If you’d like a little taste of what you’ll find in ‘Scars of the Past’, here you go.
Chapter 4
FBI Special Agent in Charge John Boyd scanned the faces of those seated around the table. As head of the terrorism task force, Boyd wanted answers. What in the hell happened today and who was behind it.
Seated with him were other members of the task force, including Jacob Mainz, who headed the cyber terror group. In the two years since Mainz joined the agency, he’d detected several serious threats to national security, stopping a major operation planned by Al Qaeda by hacking into the phones of a sleeper cell. After Mainz detected suspicious messages by surfing the dark web, he intercepted and decrypted their text messages and the FBI arrested most of the players before they finished their preparations.
That’s the way the terrorism task force works. We catch them, usually before the act, so no one even knows how bad the threat is.
Boyd silently congratulated himself on recruiting Mainz, then Jaime Gross. Jacob (Jaime) was an unbelievable hacker and his skills improved all the time. As hackers got slicker, so did Mainz. It was well worth the plea bargain on that DEA hack job and the money they’d spent providing new identities to both Gross family members to have him head the cyber team.
Along with Mainz, they also got services from Pablo as part of the plea agreement, since it was Pablo who physically installed the package on the DEA orange computer. While Pablo was pretty busy running PQ, his cybersecurity firm, he acted as a consultant and advisor to the FBI cyber team.
The whole deal worked out in the FBI’s favor, resulting in a serious drug bust at a Gulf Cartel warehouse and crippling the cartel itself through the death of Arturo Vasquez and disappearance of Hector Mateo. Of course, the cartel recovered quickly, replaced its leaders, and was stronger than ever. It was the obscene amount of money that was responsible for the violence and the depth of the cartels’ resources. Recently, they’d convicted a couple of Border Patrol agents who were on the cartel payroll.
Oh, well. You couldn’t just stop trying, even if the cartels came back. You could say the same thing for the other groups they dealt with: Al Qaeda, ISIS, internal terror groups, or whatever new group would arise tomorrow.
“Alright, what do we know?” he said, which stopped the conversations around the table in mid-sentence.
“Well, we know the shooter, David Johnston, was an Army ranger. Served as a sniper during three tours in Afghanistan. He got a medical discharge in 2014 after losing his right arm to an IED outside Fallujah. His TAPES are uniformly good and he was scheduled for promotion before his injury. We don’t see anything to connect him to Russia, Ukraine, or anything personal he had against our victim, Mikchalev. Maybe Doc will turn up something – both bodies are on slabs in the morgue now. We have folks serving a search warrant on his house, Johnston, that is, and questioning his wife and neighbors. His computer and phone are on route to Mainz and his team. That’s about all we can do now, until we turn up something,” said Fernandez, looking over at Jacob. The two had history and a deep respect for each other.
Learn more about the characters
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