Well, I got the final manuscript for The White Dahlia, the last book in the Harvester Files, uploaded and on time just by the skin of my teeth. Why? The story was essentially finished when I put it up for pre-order, but I’m a perfectionist, and that means I’m never satisfied–not with everything, just with my own work.
When I picked the release date, May 10th, I got a message from Amazon that it had to be loaded by May 6, 11:59 GMT. Suddenly the time I had was shortened by three days and eight hours because GMT is ahead of DST here in Eastern Canada!
So, I got to work. I can do this. Back to chapter one of twenty-nine plus and an epilogue, and I began tweeting word choices, sentence structure, paragraph location. Would this be better here or there? Should there be a prologue? Have I planted all the seeds for the complex plot I’ve created? Did I bring in enough but not too much from the previous books to make the reading experience pleasant for all of the readers, both those who had read the first three books and those who’d just picked up this one?
Of all the books I’ve written, MY Harvester Files series was my most popular. This book had to shine. It had to live up reader expectations.
Page by page, I tweaked and applied all of the tricks I’d learned from my editors, making sure to help the reader recall who secondary characters were with a word of explanation here and there. I sought out the plot threads, pulling on them here and there to tighten the plot, to feed the suspense. I dealt with Beth’s fears, hopes, and asperations. I worked on Al’s guilt and attraction to Beth, and I kept the action coming. In any police procedural, solving a crime involves a lot of working things through, getting reports, gathering evidence, and presenting it. I worked to make the process flow smoothly, allowing the reader to use his or her imagination to make intuitive leaps that were later confirmed.
As I got closer and closer to the ending, I started to worry. Was the book too long? Too complicated? Were there too many characters? Had a lost a reader down a plot hole? And in the background, the clock was ticking, the deadline looming, the killer gaining the upper hand.
Finally, after a gruelling marathon effort. I typed the last period. It was over. It was done, It was the best it could be.
And now, we wait for the reviews. Be kind.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Michael and Rafe Colchester escaped death in Alaska and eluded the FBI in Reno when the Harvester Task Force took down the Prophet and his son Adam, putting an end to the threat of the Great Burning.
Beth Reynolds, a member of the task force vowed to get them all, but with a trail as cold as the one they had, she had no choice but to go back to Boston. Unable to pick up the pieces of her life there, constantly on the lookout for those who’d served the Prophet, she joined NYPD, hoping the change would help her heal. Called a hero after stopping a crazed shooter in Central Park, she’s slowly getting it together again … until a vicious murder brings it all back. Recognizing the victim whose organs and blood are missing as a Missing Person, she calls for help.
Al Foster moved from St. Louis and joined the NYPD after his ex-wife went missing. He recognizes the body as one of his cold cases. With Beth’s insight, he begins to see things from her point of view and realizes his ex-wife could well have been one of this serial killer’s victims, making solving the case a joint FBI-NYPD operation. But where does the stalker find his prey with its specific blood type?
When forensic evidence points to the fact that this killer may be one of the Colchesters, the case becomes personal for both of them. As he works with her, Al must fight his growing attraction for the woman determined to bring down the Colchesters at all costs, but with Beth possessing all of the qualities they require in a woman, will she get them before they get her?
Here’s a peek at Chapter One.
Reno, Nevada,
FBI Field Office
Beth Reynolds stiffened her spine and opened the door to Larson’s outer office. She should’ve gone back to the hotel, showered, and tried to rest after working more than thirty-six hours, but this couldn’t wait. Her heart pounded, and her hands trembled, proof that her nerves—and maybe the caffeine she’d ingested—were getting the best of her.
They’d missed one, damn it. An enforcer? It had to be. Other than Adam, all of the Chosen were in Paradise, dead now thanks to a design flaw. Still, an enforcer on the loose was one too many, and whoever he was, he had a two-week lead on them. He could be anywhere.
She glanced around. Ida Reed, Larson’s secretary, usually one step ahead of her boss, always seemed to be underfoot, and yet now, when she needed her, the personal assistant was nowhere to be found. Beth looked at the printer, searching for the documents she’d sent to be printed late last night. She’d drawn up a time line, a flow chart, and a cause and results diagram, knowing as his wife Faye had maintained, that it was sometimes hard to get Rob to think outside the box. But by God she was right. There could be no other explanation. Now, the file she needed was stuck in some phantom queue awaiting the secretary’s magic touch. So where was she?
Since Beth had been unable to accompany them to Freemont as planned, given their almost symbiotic relationship, had Larson taken Ida with him instead? While Beth deplored office romances, they were a common occurrence.
And what about her own budding relationship with Tony Hamilton? She’d prided herself on maintaining a professional façade, but Tony was different. He needed a friend, especially now when his entire world had crumbled. She knew what that felt like. Helping him through this would help her—at least that was what the therapist back in Boston alleged.
Did a couple of goodnight kisses constitute a relationship? Probably not. Besides, how could it be considered an office romance when he didn’t work for BPD or the FBI? He was a multimillionaire currently helping them with the case, a lot like Jacob Andrews had done. It was true that they’d enjoyed a few dinners together, and their photograph had been in a national newspaper, but that was probably as far as it would go. Her mother had sent her an image of the picture. The caption had read, Consoling the Grieving Heir? Of course, nothing would come of this. As soon as everything was wrapped up here, he would return to Washington. It wasn’t as if they moved in the same social circles, but if her mother wanted to dream, who was she to stop her?
In the three weeks since they’d taken down the Prophet, the extent of his power, influence, and insanity had come to light, but there were still too many secrets, mysteries that haunted her dreams and made sleep impossible. For example, what had been going on at the research facility in Freemont?
By the time they’d raided the place following the Prophet’s capture, the area had been deserted. It was a lab worthy of Doctor Frankenstein. While the Prophet might not have done the experimentation himself, he’d condoned it, and that was bad enough. The illegal research into his vaccine that Adam had carried out on living patients paled in comparison. Tony had given them permission to fully dismantle whatever they found there. His heartfelt, “Destroy it all,” still resonated inside her head.
While she hadn’t seen it herself, she’d heard about the hidden section in the lower level of the facility where they’d discovered more than a dozen human cadavers in freezers, bags of frozen blood, and special containers with viruses and bacteria that had made even the virologists from the CDC shudder. Had these people been the failures from Adam’s experiments, or had something else been going on there? All she could hope was that the victims hadn’t suffered.
In other sections of the lab, they’d discovered several different drugs in various stages of development, some based on plants like foxglove, nightshade, henbane, jimson weed, and oleander. Others synthetically produced from God alone knew what. Many of the street drugs currently available were born in labs like that one. She was by no means an expert, but she’d heard Dr. Smith discussing the matter with Rob and Glenn—something about psychotropic and antipsychotic drugs, and known medications altered in some way. The CDC would handle the work of identifying the drugs and disposing of them in a safe manner, but she’d heard Mitch discussing the need to destroy everything they’d found—even the bodies which could contain pathogens. The doctor’s greatest fear was that some of the drugs created here had been removed. The DEA would be monitoring the streets closely, all of them praying these potentially lethal drugs wouldn’t surface.
Poor Tony. All of this was crushing him, and she’d seen fear and despair in his unusual green eyes. If any of those biological agents got out … he would blame himself, even though none of it was his fault. He hadn’t married the man—his mother had.
Beth blinked. No need to go there now. The woman was an absolute mess, and she didn’t even know the whole truth. As far as the Freemont facility was concerned, things were under control. No one went in or out who wasn’t supposed to since the FBI had taken over. Whoever had slipped past them wouldn’t have been able to get his hands on anything from there. No money, no power, but they needed to find him and stop him before he acquired both. There were too many followers still missing. Too many acolytes looking for a savior, and while an enforcer wasn’t a Chosen, he might command enough respect to set himself up as the next prophet. She shuddered. And if that happened, what came next might be far worse than what they’d seen.
She stared at the closed office door. No doubt Rob, as big a workaholic as she was, was in there drowning in paperwork. The last thing she wanted to do was deliver more bad news, but what choice did she have? Chad Markell, the Deputy-Director of the FBI, had given her a job to do. When she’d realized the implications of what she’d discovered, she’d repeated the analysis three times. Steeling herself, Beth knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Rob Halliday called.
Opening the door, she stepped into the small office.
“Beth!” His face split into a huge grin. “You must be psychic. The Reno police just called. Acting on a tip early this morning, they sent the explosive detection K-9 unit into the Reno airport and found explosive residue in a mechanic’s locker. Unfortunately, the man in his forties, known to his employers as Sam Hill, an obvious alias since he doesn’t seem to exist before he started working there six months ago, wasn’t prepared to go peacefully. He pulled out a gun and fired. Suicide by cop. I wish it could’ve been different, but…”
Beth frowned. Here she was about to suggest an all-out manhunt, and suddenly the bomber had been delivered to them all wrapped up in a neat and tidy package. A sacrificial lamb provided by a mole who could’ve read the missing report she’d sent to the printer last night? If she suggested there was another one here, Rob would think her paranoid. They’d already run background checks on everyone employed by the Reno Police Department and the FBI.
Rob didn’t seem to notice her preoccupation since he’d continued speaking, and she forced herself to concentrate.
“I’m expecting a call from Trevor. They’ve finished sequencing and matching all the DNA on the bodies in the sanctuary. As well, last night, the coroner finally sent over the prophet’s toxicology report. Somehow, it got misfiled. They’re still looking for the full autopsy one, but with a little luck, we’ll be home by this time next week.”
She doubted that, especially once she told him what she’d learned.
“Misfiled? My aunt’s patootie,” she grumbled. “More likely someone on the inside made those reports temporarily disappear for some reason—maybe to alter the findings.”
The Prophet might be dead, but his deep cover followers could be anywhere. Why not in the hospital?
“Maybe, but it doesn’t look as if anything has been tampered with. The papers were probably misfiled by accident. It does happen. People lose things all the time, especially in a crisis. There was a hell of a lot going on and so many bodies to deal with.”
Did he really believe that? How could he be that naïve? Rob continued his briefing, and she tried to focus, hoping she hadn’t missed anything critical.
“Dr. Smith has been a godsend. I don’t know what we would’ve done without her. Now, according to the report, the Prophet had a number of strange drugs in his system—some they’ve found in Freemont—as well as the vaccine antibodies Julie Swift provided. I’m actually looking forward to reading that autopsy report to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. You heard about all of the frozen blood? Hard to believe a man who saw illness as a fatal flaw would have a blood disorder, but that’s the only thing that makes sense. Whatever his problem was, he hid it well, and of course with Adam as his physician … The man had to be a walking time bomb.”
“Speaking of bombs,” she jumped on the opening. Once he knew what she did, he would reconsider his laissez-faire attitude. “I’ve got the report on the explosives used in the motel bombing, the ranch explosion, and the plane’s sabotage.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why Chad insisted we look at those. It isn’t as if we have nothing to do. So, did you verify that the motel bombing and the one in Unionville had nothing to do with our case?” He leaned forward in anticipation. “That it was just an escalation between the Sons of Darkness and the Dark Nights? Those two local biker gangs have been at one another’s throats for years.”
She shook her head. “I wish I could. It would save us all a lot of grief. You aren’t going to like this, but the bombs used to blow up the tunnels at the White Iris Clinic, the Desert Moon Motel, the Lewiston ranch near Unionville, and the private jet carrying the Prophet’s body were identical to the one planted in the bar in Boston last year.”
“Son of a bitch!” Rob slammed his fist on the desk. “How is that possible?”
Beth swallowed. She’d been one of the bomb techs who’d investigated the Quincy Market bombing. She’d escaped by the skin of her teeth, an upset stomach sending her home early, leaving her colleagues behind—behind to die or be maimed. Taking a deep breath, she explained about piping, fuses, timers, black powder, and signatures—all the knowledge she possessed that made her an authority on the matter. When she finished, she exhaled heavily, the lack of sleep finally getting to her.
“You’re sure?” he asked, his shoulders slumped.
She nodded. “I am. The bikers killed at the motel along with the tourists and those who died at the ranch were simply collateral damage. Someone lured them there—don’t ask me how, I don’t know—but whoever designed and possibly planted those bombs must’ve escaped from the training facility last spring because there’s no doubt Pierce trained him.” Fury raged within her. “So, we’re looking for another enforcer. How many of them did we miss, Rob? How many are out there just waiting for the Prophet to rise from the ashes like some goddamn Phoenix?” Her voice shook with the strength of her emotions.
“Calm down, Beth. That won’t happen. He’s dead, and that bastard wasn’t Christ. But Pierce? That monster may be dead and buried but the ramifications of his actions just won’t go away. We suspected some had gotten away before the raid. There was space for two dozen trainees, and we could only account for eighteen. The ones were holding still won’t talk, and it’s been more than four months. So you’re 100 percent positive that whoever made those bombs learned from the master?”
“Yes. I triple checked everything myself.”
Rob ran his hands through his close-cropped hair.
“Is it possible these weren’t new? Could Pierce had moved them out of the training facility before we raided it. You know how they keep finding unexploded World War II bombs, landmines, and grenades.”
Beth closed her eyes and prayed for patience.
“It doesn’t quite work that way,” she said, drawing on what little strength she had left. “These aren’t relatively stable ordinance. With the right parts, our bomber could’ve put them together, but he had to know how. A pipe bomb isn’t like a savings’ bond you can put away for a rainy day. Black powder deteriorates, gets unstable.”
“Okay. I’ll give you that since you’re the expert, but it’s a moot point. The man who planted the bomb in the plane is dead now. It stands to reason that if the bombs were all the same—and you say they are—then he must’ve planted those, too. It’s over, and I for one am glad it is.”
“But…” she started, but his attention had shifted from her to his desk.
Like Chad, he was old-school, needing everything in black and white.
“Here it is.” He pulled out a pile of papers stapled together. “They’ve finished the inventory of the mine. Dr. Swift didn’t want anyone in certain areas until the virus and vaccine were neutralized, so it took a little longer than I’d hoped. They’ve found explosive materials there, possibly left over from the construction. Can the techs check to see if it’s the same kind used in your bombs?”
“Yes.” She huffed out a breath. “My samples are down in the lab.”
“Good.” He nodded satisfied and turned back to the papers on his desk.
But she was far from convinced. He had to listen. Her gut was never wrong.
Beth licked her lips. “Rob, I know you think this is over, but I’ve been able to piece together a timeline of all the explosions. I’d hoped to have a hard copy for you and sent it to the printer, but it isn’t there, and I can’t find Ida.”
“She went with Larson. He needed her to take notes or something.”
“I see.” Beth frowned. “Well, maybe she can get the paperwork for you when she gets back. Rob, I’m not convinced this mechanic is the bombmaker or rather the only bombmaker. We assumed the prophet’s followers didn’t want his body used for research, so blowing him to kingdom come was a way to prevent that, but why would the mechanic blow up the motel or that ranch? I’m convinced there was someone else. Someone who got away—and left a trail of bodies in his wake.”
He steepled his hands under his chin as if praying.
“You seem very sure of this.”
“I am. Now that we know the motel and the ranch are involved, ask yourself why someone bothered to blow up those particular places. They weren’t high value targets.”
“And you’ve figured out why they did.” He leaned forward.
She nodded. “Obviously, it was to cover up any traces of whoever was staying there. The Lewistons raised horses. The Chosen ran a stud farm and often used enforcers as messengers. What better place than to hide with someone he knew, someone he’d worked with?”
“Someone who could identify him and had to die,” Rob finished. “That might explain the ranch, but why the motel?”
“I suspect to stay close to the hospital and the Prophet. My guess would be that he was on his way to the mine when news of the Prophet’s capture got out—either privately to him, courtesy of a mole we’ve yet to find, or from the Press. Maybe he was hoping to rescue his mentor once he improved, but after Mrs. Hamilton requested we turn off the machines, there was nothing he could do except get out of town and find a safe place to hide. So, he destroyed the motel and any trace of his presence there and then moved on to the ranch.”
“As much as I admire your deductive reasoning, I hope to hell you’re wrong. Do you have any proof?”
Talking to a brick wall was easy; getting it to listen and understand was a hell of a lot harder. That was the way she felt at the moment. “Other than bomb fragments? How much more proof do you need?”
The White Dahlia is available for preorder and goes live in Monday, May 10, at the introductory price of $2.99 USD It will be free to read on KU. Don’t have a kindle? You can download the app to your phone, tablet, or computer free.
Living the Dream 