For long-time fans of the series, some of these might be a reunion, but for new readers, let’s take a look at the four main people caught up in the events of my new political thriller Deeper Secrets!
Ben Wiles: A young Congressional aide bucking to advance. With an ambitious Congressman and a Chief of Staff who might be more than he appears, Ben’s road to the top in politics looks long and rocky. But when he interrupts a murder in a grimy back alley in Washington D.C., his career and his very life are in danger.
Colleen Cristina: a cyber security consultant wide-eyed at her first inside look at politics. Once she worked on the cutting edge of artificially intelligent software, but walked away when she developed ethical concerns about the system’s power. Now she’s an independent consultant hired to deal with a computer virus no one else can stop. Risking her life wasn’t in the job description.
Senator Mike Vincent: rising political star trying to change the system for the better. He wants to be President, but the insiders just want him gone. When the cyber attack on his campaign turns all too real, Vincent must decide whether his cause is worth his life, and that of the people around him.
Alyssa Barr: last heir of one of America’s great political families, and the real fundraising power behind Vincent’s campaign. She glides easily down the halls of power, never giving a hint of the secrets she’s seen and kept. But Alyssa has her own dark past, and leaving it behind won’t be easy.
Interested? You can sign up here to get an e-mail when Deeper Secrets is released. You even get the prequel novel for free just for signing up!
A string of terrorist bombings rocks the nation’s capital. A young congressional aide interrupts a murder in a grimy Washington alley. A mysterious, unstoppable computer virus upends the race for the White House. The response: a powerful new computer system that reads everyone’s posts, emails, tweets, and more, then decides who’s a threat. But this technology has power beyond anyone’s nightmares, and democracy itself is caught in the crossfire.
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Deeper Secrets is my new novel, coming on Amazon, iBooks, Nook and more this month. In the following excerpt, we meet protagonist Ben Wiles as he accidentally interrupts a murder.
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He scanned the crowd for danger. In his mind, he rehearsed the techniques he might need: how to break a one-handed grab, how to break a two-handed grab, how to counter a right punch, how to counter a left. From the first day he tied on a belt and tried the martial arts, his old teacher told him that if he ever used the skills to always take it seriously. Bouncing at the Neon might be just a night job to earn extra income, but Ben never stopped following that advice.
Around him, the dancers swirled like dandelion seeds on the breeze. The music sounded more like gale force winds, though. Hard, loud, with bass that rattled his teeth, and more beats per minute than he expected to have dollars in his paycheck, the DJ’s current selection drove a frenzy.
The back door to his right slammed hard in its frame. Hard. This wasn’t caused by some drunk stumbling down the alley and bumping it. The metal door clanged as if someone had driven a battering ram into it.
Ben eased out of his leaning position on the wall, standing up straight. Brows furrowed, neck craning forward slightly, he peered at the door, then eyed it warily. Whatever made that noise was big enough and strong enough to rattle a steel door in a brick wall. It wasn’t something he felt any great eagerness to face.
Then he heard a cry. Not even one word, just most of one:
“Hel—”
Help. Someone out there was shouting for help. Or at least they had been. Something cut it off.
Praying he’d find nothing more than a delivery truck that had missed the loading dock, Ben flipped the hidden switch that would stop the fire alarm from sounding when he cracked the door open. He eased it open.
It didn’t want to move.
Surprised, Ben stared at the door for a moment, wondering whether he really wanted to look outside.
He pressed down the handle and gave a firmer shove. This time it yielded.
As he opened the door and stepped out, a heavy thump barely made itself heard over the music from inside. Poking his head around the door, Ben saw the cause of the sound.
Bloody, messy, dead, a man sprawled in the alley. He had, apparently, been leaning up against the door before Ben opened it and knocked him down. Possibly, him collapsing up against the door in the first place had been the cause of the sound that had drawn Ben outside.
Snow covered the grime of the alley, now stained with blood. A biting wind hurried between the buildings. Ben’s T-shirt felt woefully insufficient even before he finished opening the door, let alone once he stepped outside.
A very definitely live man stood next to the dead one. Ben stared at him for half a second, taking in close-cropped hair shorter than his own and an unshaven jawline in the glare of the club’s exterior lighting. He wore a baseball cap and a leather jacket.
Then the man lunged at him.
Ben’s right arm delivered a downward block, but it wasn’t enough. The stranger hit him hard in the gut. He grabbed Ben’s black T-shirt and pulled him out into the alley. All of Ben’s techniques for breaking a one-handed grab started from a standing position. Halfway laying on the ground, being held up by the scruff of his shirt, wasn’t an ideal way to execute them.
He curled his fingers into a claw-shape and raked them as hard as he could over his attacker’s shin. The man cried out and dropped Ben, who scrambled to his feet.
When he did, he saw a pistol aimed right at his nose.
Where before Ben had picked out many details of the man’s face, now he could see nothing but the weapon. He felt his skin tingle as a tide of adrenaline rose in his system. He found that his limbs would not respond to mental commands to move. The barrel of the gun looked wider than the gates of Hell. He realized, at that moment, that he had never before known the meaning of terror. Now, as he saw a gun pointed right between his eyes, he learned what fear really was.
Yet, from somewhere deep in the depths of his psyche, a lesson from his college self-defense classes bubbled to the surface. He swore he was hearing the instructor’s voice right in his ear.
“The chances of this working are fifty-fifty at best. Never do this. Never, never, never try this. Unless your life really is on the line. If you’re about to die, only then should you try this.”
Well, his life really was on the line.
Ben put his hands up in the universal surrender position but down a little bit closer to his head rather than fully extended into the air. The difference might have been attributed to an understandable fear of moving with a gun pointed at his head.
“I surrender,” he said. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Sorry,” the man with the gun said. “Nothing personal. It’s just that you can identify m–”
Before he finished speaking, Ben slapped both his hands inward and across in front of his face, as fast and as hard as he could.
His left hand hit the barrel of the gun, shoving it away from his head and off to his right.
His right hand slapped the inside wrist of his attacker, intended to sting the nerves in his hand and make it almost impossible for him to keep a firm grip.
Between the two, the gun pointed wide of his right ear when it went off.
The gunshot sledgehammered Ben’s hearing into powder. Nothing went through his ears to his brain except a painful ringing. It scared him so badly that he failed to follow through on the rest of the technique. He should have grabbed the grip of the pistol, stripped it out of his attacker’s weakened hand, broken his finger in the process, and shot the man, according to his old teacher. But even if Ben had the nerve to shoot someone, he had lost all voluntary control of his muscles in the panic from the gunshot. The gun fell to the ground, fortunately not going off again.
Behind him, the door to the club opened.
“What’s going on out here?”
The baritone voice of one of the other bouncers was a lifeline thrown to Ben. It was a whiff of bright clean hope to nostrils awash in the scent of the grave.
The man with the gun moved only his eyes. He glanced at the newcomer, then back at Ben, then back at the newcomer. Confronted by yet another witness, he scooped up his gun, turned, and sprinted down the alley. The attacker disappeared into the night.
My novel Death of Secrets is free on Kindle today! If you’ve never read it, here’s a brief summary of the plot:
The end of privacy as we know it?
Kathy Kelver nearly trips over a murder victim on her way back to her dorm room late one night. In his last words, the dying man gives her stolen data about a secret project that could blow the lid off a shocking conspiracy. From the halls of Congress to the National Security Agency and beyond, Kathy must run for her life from shadowy forces who want her dead, while trying to build a relationship and hang on to her faith. The secret she’s carrying could end the right to privacy forever, if she doesn’t survive to warn the world.
Right now, every time anyone makes a call, the National Security Agency tracks what number is called, the length of the call, and how often you call.
In the news today, the Obama administration is considering four options for altering that program. Only one of the four options includes ending the program entirely.
I think most Americans would like to go back to the era when there was no huge database of every phone number we have ever called. But it looks like the odds are three to one against us.
In sixteen hours, the Kickstarter campaign for Death of Secrets will come to an end. I am already overwhelmed by the level of support shown by my friends. If you still want to back the book, go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1785187395/death-of-secrets. You can get a signed copy of the book as a reward, or more!
Once the novel goes to publication at the end of the month, I am prepared for anything. It could sell no more copies than the 40 people who are already backing it. In my dream world, it will sell millions of copies and I can become a professional novelist. More likely, of course, is somewhere in between. I trust God for the outcome. I know that He loves me, and that however many copies of the novel sell, he will use that for my good.
Whatever happens, I have already learned that I have Grade A friends who are willing to put their personal resources on the line to help me chase a dream. Thank you. Thank you all.
The cover art for my novel came in this morning. “Excited” doesn’t even really cover it. Hopefully the Kickstarter campaign will be up and running by Tuesday…
My friends, 2014 is the year I finally live out my dream. I’m publishing a novel! Death of Secrets is already written, and will be available by the end of January. Watch for a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the marketing, and Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates about the book. I’m thrilled to be finally doing this, and I can’t wait for you all to read it.
What’s it about? I’m glad you asked!
What if our government went beyond monitoring e-mail and phone traffic? What if the surveillance state exceeded anything we’ve imagined so far. What if there were no secrets at all?
Kathy Kelver is an innocent bystander who becomes a witness to murder. Mike Vincent is a Member of Congress who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Their paths will cross as they uncover a new technology with implications so chilling it would represent the end of privacy as we know it.
Together, Mike and Kathy find themselves running for their lives as they try to save the country from the death of secrets.
My novel Death of Secrets is free on Kindle today! If you’ve never read it, here’s a brief summary of the plot: