Kirjahaku

On an isolated stretch of desert highway, Josh Reston is pulled over in the dead of night.By all accounts, he is a quiet, unassuming young man from the woods of Western Pennsylvania with a busted taillight. Until the arresting officer discovers more than a hundred pounds of cocaine and ten thousand dollars in cash stowed in the undercarriage of his vehicle.Brought to jail in the middle of the night, he offers to share everything he knows about the man he works for, Edgar Santos, and the operation Santos runs in exchange for the guaranteed safety of his family back home.Less than two months on the job, the offer reeks of everything Assistant District Attorney Dina Chadwick despises about the legal system. No part of her even wants to consider it, a feeling outweighed only by the intrigue of finally getting something concrete on Santos.Unsure how to proceed, if the claims Reston is making are even true, she decides to step outside the traditional order. Beginning with a simple phone call, she has no idea the person who ultimately answers will be Ham, a woman just recently released from self-imposed exile and aching to get back to doing what she does best.And with more than ample reasons of her own to get Even...

Three years ago, Ham retired to a quiet life in the remote desert of Northern Mexico.Realizing what she was doing would likely end in her death, she severed all ties, disappearing across international borders.Her retirement ended abruptly with a single message. The sole person in the world Ham feels the least bit of loyalty to is in trouble, in need not only of Ham but of the very skills that put her into hiding.Acting against every ingrained maxim, and ignoring the myriad warning signs popping up along the way, Ham returns north to find a great deal has changed in her time away. The world moved on, evolving in ways she would have never imagined. From local gang affiliates to the Los Angeles Police Department, everybody seems to be involved in something, all of it somehow leading back to a woman.A woman relying entirely on Ham to get her through...

Never a more random group of misfits had the world ever seen...Fresh from a summer legal internship in a windowless office on the east coast, all Drake Bell wants is get back to Montana, reunite with his friends, catch some fish, and maybe do some hiking.By all accounts, it's a solid plan for his final year of law school... and one that's thrown far off course by the first case to walk through the door of the legal clinic where he's assigned.Eight months pregnant and closing fast on her due date, the girl is scared. What was supposed to be a simple surrogacy agreement went tragically wrong, with other young girls just like her coming up missing... or even worse.She's on the run with no one else to turn to.Drake manages to push his reluctance aside and agrees to take the case, fast uncovering that what appears to be a simple transaction is actually something much larger, encompassing some of the biggest names in Missoula County--names with the clout and the conviction to do whatever they must to ensure their secret remains hidden.

An ugly name for an even uglier practice...Bargain Mart, a fixture in the Missoula economic structure, has fallen on hard times. The situation is dire, they're on the phone daily with corporate, and if a financial windfall doesn't arrive soon, their doors will close.Across town, Drake Bell has settled back into his life as a third-year law student. Behind him are the events of the past fall; the scars for him, his partner Ava, and his friends the Zoo Crew are just now beginning to heal.All appears normal until a case arrives in the form of Alice Galt. Recently widowed, she was attempting to put her life back in order when a call arrived informing her of a sizable life insurance policy in her late husband's name. A policy she never knew a thing about from a company on the opposite coast she's never heard of.Despite growing trepidation, Drake agrees to look into the matter, fast finding the situation facing Galt is far from the only one in town. With each one he examines, the number of inconsistencies grows.The sole thing they have in common is their ties to a industrial giant desperate to remain that way...

Every great team needs someone to do the little things...Deep in the heart of winter, things are shifting for the Zoo Crew. Drake Bell is wrapping up his last days in law school and preparing to take the bar exam. Kade Keuhl finally relented and agreed to apply for his private investigator's license. The ski lift at the local Snow Plaza grounded everybody from hitting the slopes. And Emily, Drake's former college flame, is back in town looking to make him an offer that could alter everything moving forward. A hundred miles east of Missoula, just outside of Butte, the mansion of a reclusive billionaire is burned to the ground. A radical new accelerant is used to reduce the place to rubble in a fraction of the expected time, leaving local law enforcement stumped and heightening the impetus to apprehend whoever is responsible.Fearing the heightened scrutiny that could come with such an event, a quick arrest is made. The man accused of the heinous crime is working to provide for his young wife and impending child--a former Montana Grizzly that calls on his teammate with one simple request: Prove he didn't do it.Working under the constraints of expectations and growing unrest, Drake and the Zoo Crew go to work to unfold a deeper story than anyone anticipated.What started as a simple case of arson soon stretches back a decade, encompassing land deals gone bad, deep personal ideologies, and activism taken to an ugly extreme...

Not a condition, but a symptom...Nothing about the case seemed to follow the previous patterns Drake Bell experienced in his young career. The local public defender's office claimed a conflict of interest and turfed one of their potential clients his way. The incident in question was a single vehicle accident, the victim a fourteen-year-old girl left in a coma and fighting for her life.The client, someone completely new to town, was intent on accepting their guilt in the matter.Something about the story strikes a chord with Drake, compelling him to investigate further. Faced with his new client's trepidation, their insistence on self-incrimination, and the uncertain future of the young girl still in critical care, he flings himself into the case.Things soon begin to shift when he finds himself on a quest that is part medical mystery and part history lesson, trying in earnest to understand the condition afflicting his client and what it means for her situation. Running short on time, Drake calls on the myriad skills of the Zoo Crew.Together, they uncover a trail stretching back more than a hundred years, involving some of the oldest wealth and industry in the state, and those that would do anything to continue protecting it...

Less than a week before Christmas, Columbus Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner receive a call from dispatch.The body of a young woman has been found floating in the Olentangy River, her teeth forcibly removed, her fingerprints obliterated, any chance at a positive identification residing only within the string of inexplicable tattoos inked across the bottom of her feet.Across town, an organization has taken hold in the North End, capitalizing on the recent gentrification in the area by introducing an entirely new and exotic service that the people of Central Ohio have never seen before. Preying on a captive market, they have developed a small empire in just a short amount of time, bringing with it far more than anybody could have foreseen.Reed is forced to uncover how these things might all tie together, working far beyond the usual scope of his jurisdiction, perhaps even much further than he's ever gone before...

The night was supposed to be a celebration. The culmination of another successful season for the guide service Hawk Tate and his business partner, Kaylan Quick, run together. A joyous occasion that saw them eat, drink, and toast the passing of another year.And ultimately ended with one of them in the hospital, both only narrowly escaping with their lives.At the same time, five hundred miles to the west, Hawk's former DEA teammate Shawn Martin and his wife are feeling equally festive. Back from a weeklong business trip, they put the children to bed and slip outside, hoping to enjoy some champagne and time together in the hot tub.A plan that ends in ways neither of them could have ever imagined.After years of working throughout Central and South America, targeting some of the largest drug runners in the world, the coordination of the events is too much to be coincidence. Someone is coming after their team, looking to right some perceived wrong.Shocked and confused, Hawk is forced to plunge back into the life he left six years before. Relying on friends new and old, he begins to unravel what is happening, his hunt taking him across the western half of the United States in search of an answer that is much, much closer to home that he would have ever thought possible...

Because forever is a really long time...For the last six years, Tim Scarberry called Portland, Oregon home. Placed there by the Witness Protection Program, he assimilated into his new existence, trying to gain some level of enjoyment from the life he never asked for...or wanted.A life that is completely destroyed by a single phone call, nothing more than a message telling him the last remaining tether to his old life was severed in a tragic and unexpected way.Having no choice but to abandon his adopted life and return to his roots, Scarberry finds himself dropped into a situation more harrowing than he ever dreamed.Allied with a single sheriff's deputy--a young woman he knew only briefly in his youth fighting battles of her own--the two face a network of illegal gun runners, apathetic bureaucracy, and federal agency, ultimately squaring off with the very thing Scarberry's been trying to avoid for so long...

The request was simple enough. A former client had booked the fishing trip of a lifetime, a week floating the pristine waters of Patagonia by day and enjoying a luxury cabin by night. The guide he had hired to go with him had backed out at the last second and he was hoping Hawk Tate might be able to fill in. Still weeks away from the start of the Yellowstone season, and never one to shy away from one of the premier fishing spots in the world or a hefty payday, Hawk agrees. What neither he nor his client could have possibly known was that at that moment in Venezuela, a presidential primary was just heating up. A campaign that was already plenty contentious, it reaches a fevered pitch when anti-American rhetoric is brought to the fore, complete with burning flags and spewing hostility. Halfway to their destination, the flight Hawk and his friend are on is forced down into Caracas, thrusting them into the middle of an international situation. A situation that fast goes terribly awry, forcing Hawk back into a life he has so desperately tried to leave behind...