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…

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…

“Those guys might have been brutal, but they built this place from the ground up by implementing a code. Rules for the rest of us to follow.” Retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Detective Solomon Hill hasn’t heard the name in years. A man he hasn’t thought about since sending him away more than two decades prior for attempted murder. One of the biggest arrests of his entire career, a person the the world is better off without. Or so it was for the last twenty-one years in the time prior to his sudden inclusion on a list of governor’s pardons. A free pass undoing all that occurred, releasing a man with a short fuse and a long list of people he holds responsible for what happened. People that Hill still feels responsible for, even if his current physical condition will no longer allow him to make good on it. Low on time and options, Hill does the only think he can think of, calling in an old marker—a favor owed from his early days on the force, extended from one of the last vestiges of the original Las Vegas. Someone accustomed to handling issues in a way Hill isn’t accustomed to. Three hundred miles to the south, Ham muddles her way through the final months of a slow winter. Endless hours spent training for an unknown opponent, each day without the phone ringing heightening her desire for action. The need to be moving again, unable to feel fully alive without the adrenaline of the job after years spent relegated to the sidelines. A craving that sends her hurtling up out of the desert the instant she hears what happened in Las Vegas... Right into a head-on collision with a deadly opponent.

Never did I imagine her triggering the self-destruct. The absolute last resort, for when things were so bad there was no choice but to wipe it all away. A means of escape made possible by obliterating all that was forty years in the making. Destruction that is complete and total, all but a basic outline of the two main structures reduced to rubble. Charred and debris flung outward in a wide arc. A dark smudge of black and gray against a pristine white background. APPLESAUCE. One word. Ten letters. All capitals. This safe word was drilled into Ham time and again as she was growing up. A phrase meant to let her and the numerous other girls passing through the refuge know danger was near. One of the various forms of evil they were all hiding from had somehow found them tucked deep in the Idaho wilderness. A simple term Ham never once heard put to use during her formative years there, the numerous precautions taken to keep them safe more than sufficient. Defenses that have now somehow fallen short, meaning that when the single word arrives in her texts from an unknown number late one night, there is no doubting the sender or the unspoken meaning behind it. She needed to get to Idaho. Now. Just minutes removed from her most recent assignment, Ham begins her trek north. A mad dash through the night where she arrives to find the only home she’s ever known destroyed. The closest thing to family she has left forced to go on the run. It’s the beginning of a sprint far more intense than anything she’s ever encountered. A race to find her surrogate relations and keep them safe while unraveling the various forces and motivations acting against them. A list of possibilities that goes back decades, with reach and resources far greater than anything Ham could have imagined...