A volunteer firefighter is killed fighting a meth lab fire. Was it an accident or murder? A dying father wants to know. Private Investigator Mike Ross and Firefighter/Paramedic Thomas O'Brien have the difficult task of finding the answer—that is, if they survive.   

A kidnapping from long ago stirs up the past in horrifying ways when Private Investigator Mike Ross and Firefighter/Paramedic Thomas O'Brien find themselves immersed in a triple mystery—who killed a trailer full of racing greyhounds, how did a winning greyhound disappear and why has a young girl gone missing?

Fire ripped with greedy fingers into the midnight sky.

The ghastly flickering light and strobes from the trucks provided surreal illumination for the responding crew of the Veda Volunteer Fire Department. 

It was Ray Nelson's first structure fire. 

His pulse pounded in his head, and adrenaline had his breath rasping in his throat as he struggled to put on his bunker gear and air pack. All that weight still felt uncomfortable. Bulky. 

After all, he'd been on the department only two months. 

And he wasn't one bit sure he was ready for this. But he sure as hell wasn't going to admit that to the chief.

Rural Columbia, 1984

Mike Ross fired a RPG-7 High Explosive Anti-Tank round at the door. Designed to penetrate nineteen and a half inches of hardened steel, it punched through the steel like buckshot through butter. He hoped it immolated some of the kidnappers hidden behind it with a five-thousand degree jet of plasma.

“Knock-knock, fuckers,” Mike said.

Keying a throat-mike, he said, “Green light.”

Assault teams fired pre-placed breaching charges cutting doorways in the side of the structure. Who needed to use the door when a specially designed shape charge could make an entry point in even a brick and concrete wall? Then they rolled in flash-bangs.

Explosions and strobe flashes lit the heavy night air.

The assault team made entry, and death followed.

Soft stutters of suppressed submachine guns were washed out by the screams of the wounded and dying.

It was all over in minutes—short, fast and murderous, the way it should always be done.