Imagine the irony. The first love of your life…ends up being the death of you?
It’s that very thought running through Lee Hamilton’s mind as he stares down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson pointed at his chest. Just a week earlier he was sitting with old friends, reminiscing about wild college days, and now all of them are faced with almost certain death. Little did they know that innocent inquiries about Lee’s first love would set them on a collision course with someone whose shadowy wake included numerous unsolved murders.
Thirty years ago Lee was smitten with Andi Porter the second their eyes locked across a busy dance floor in Panama City. He was a college sophomore dragged into a last minute road trip to Florida by his roommates, and she was a freshman from another southern university on an annual trek to visit family and friends. Lee’s shy nature was no match for Andi’s buoyant, self-confident personality, and the two quickly became inseparable. Their week together under the spell of the Florida panhandle was abruptly ended when she was summoned home, but Lee vowed they would beat the odds against long distance relationships and find a way to make it work between them. In return, Andi handed Lee a sealed white envelope with strict orders not to open it until she instructed him to. As he watched Andi drive away through tear filled eyes, her envelope gripped tightly in his hand, Lee took solace in the promise of a future that up until then had only seemed possible in his dreams.
That future was crushed when the letter arrived bearing the tragic news of Andi’s death in a car accident during her return home from Florida.
Lee did the only thing he could…he ran. He ran away from his friends, from school, from everything that reminded him of the girl who had captured his heart and soul.
Now years later, Lee is a recent widower struggling to get his life back on track once again. After stumbling across objects from his past that bring back painful memories of abandoned relationships and a fleeting love, he resolves himself to reconnect with his old college buddies. Their nostalgic get together ends in a pact to seek out the answers to questions Lee couldn’t bring himself to ask thirty years ago. It’s those answers that have them in the predicament they find themselves now, but also hint at even larger question.
Could Andi still be alive?
KNIGHT RISE is my first novel in need of some serious editing.
FALLEN KNIGHT
Most of America is unaware that in 1984 the largest bio-terrorist attack on U.S. soil took place in the Pacific Northwest. Seven hundred and fifty-one people were sickened, but thankfully nobody died. Now in a quiet commuting town just outside of our nations capital there exists a growing threat in someone who believes one inescapable truth...they can do better.
Lee Hamilton is a HR Manager whose stereotypical life is buoyed by his relationship with five old college buddies, the Knights. That changes early one morning when a Knight is found brutally beaten and left for dead.
For Lee and the others a long forgotten motto comes rushing back -- you mess with one Knight, you mess with them all. They wonder if the attack is related to their friend’s recent hiring at a private detective agency and their answer comes from the firm's manager, Dianne Williams. She suspects the beating is connected to an attempted poisoning of her office staff and that someone is trying to put the agency, specifically its newest investigator, out of commission. With their friend lying in a coma and Dianne's workforce seriously ill, an alliance is formed between the determined investigator and the Knights to hunt down those responsible. The mystery deepens when clues are uncovered that point to a Columbine-style school shooting in Virginia.
The unconventional group follows the trail into the midst of less than helpful local officials and a population distrustful of outsiders. Despite the obstacles, they learn that everything is not as reported in the news, including a set of mysterious numbers connecting other crimes, each one escalating in scope and violence. The most baffling clue of all is the suicide note left by the young shooter that simply reads…I’m not finished yet. Now their efforts have drawn the attention of an improbable puppet master who decides to teach the Knights a lesson, one which will not only put their lives in danger, but thousands of others as well.
Thus sets the stage for my second novel (also mystery/suspense) which I am actively querying agents.
KNIGHT WATCH
Mystery/Suspense. Outlined.
MOVING FEAR
YA Paranormal. 1st draft complete. ITINERARY - my first short story. Scheduled for publication in An Honest Lie fall of 2012.
FIGMENT - short story.
TIL DEATH DO US JOIN - short story.
