Covert operative Horace Chase has been chasing ghosts his entire life. First, his Medal-of-Honor winner father who died in Vietnam without ever meeting his son. And left him the legacy of an automatic appointment to the Military Academy at West Point which shaped the next thirty-five years of Chase's life. Then, the ghost of his mother, who died while he was at war in Afghanistan and wounded, causing him to resign his commission and return to the United States, a lost soul. Chase now wears two hats as a Federal counter-terrorism liaison to the local police department in Boulder, Colorado where he becomes embroiled in two seemingly un-related cases. Working as a detective with Boulder PD he chases another death, this one the apparent rape/murder of Rachel Stevens, an upscale housewife attending night classes at the University of Colorado. And with his counter-terrorism team he is embroiled in a series of killings involving a militia group, a rogue ex-Special Forces officer, a psychopathic ex-CIA contract mercenary, and ruthless drug runners. From the streets of Boulder, to the highest railroad tunnel in the world, to a swingers club hiding in plain site in suburbia, Afghanistan starts to look pretty good to Chase.

NY Times Bestselling Author, former Green Beret and West Point Graduate, Bob Mayer. Horace Chase arrives on Hilton Head Island to pay his last respects at the Intracoastal Waterway where his late mother’s ashes were spread and to inspect the home his mother left him in her will. He’s been recently forced into retirement, his divorce is officially final, and now he’s standing in the middle of the front yard of his ‘new’ house where a tree has crashed right through the center of it. What could possibly go wrong? Within six hours of arriving on Hilton Head, Chase is exchanging gunfire with men who’ve kidnapped a young boy and tried to grab the boy’s mother, Sarah Briggs. Soon he’s waist deep in an extortion plot to funnel a hundred million dollars of Superbowl on-line gambling money into an offshore bank account or else the boy dies. Dave Riley has long retired from the military and living peacefully on sleepy Dafuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. Sort of. Actually he’s bored, feeling old, and just a bit cranky running his deceased uncle’s small-time bookie operation. Horace Chase, meet Dave Riley. Riley-Chase. Chase and Riley assemble a team of misfits and eccentrics as they take on the powerful Russian mob in the lawless tidal lands of the Low Country to get the boy back. Meet Erin: Chase’s long-ago summer fling, now a veterinarian and not interested in men any more, at least that way. But her suturing skills and her knowledge of the island bring assets the team needs. Especially after Chase’s first visit with the Russian requires a bit of the former. Meet Gator: an ex-Ranger, iron-pumping, fire-breathing hulk of a redneck, with a soft spot in his heart for Erin, and steroids burning in his muscles to hurt people. As long as Riley and Chase point him in the right direction, the rest of the populace should be all right. Meet Kono: a Gullah, descendant of the free slaves who fled to the barrier islands in the 19th century and developed their own culture. He nurses his own pain and secrets, but heeds Chase’s call to renew their childhood friendship. Especially when he learns the target is the Russians. It adds up to a fiery confrontation to rescue the young boy, and settle some old scores. But Riley and Chase need to remember a basic tenet from their days in covert operations: Nothing is ever as it appears.

Place, time and family. Three things that shape individuals. Sometimes with love. Other times with violence. Former covert operative, Horace Chase, has just discovered he has a son; a son who fled the Military Institute of South Carolina a year and a half ago after being accused of murder. The victim is the grandson of the most powerful woman in Charleston, South Carolina, who has sworn vengeance. Chase teams up with another former covert operative Dave Riley and one of Riley’s old CIA friends, Kate Westland to find his son and uncover the truth. Barely into their investigation they become caught up in a land development deal for Daufuskie Island worth hundreds of millions. Chase and Riley’s covert background has taught them many things, but the most valuable has been that nothing is ever as it appears as an old nemesis rears her head, hell bent on revenge against them both along with a good helping of greed. And in the shadows hovers THE CELLAR, the agency that polices the world of covert operations. One by one, the competitors of the land deal are being killed and the threat to Chase’s son grows. And nothing, not the present, not the past, and no one, are as they appear to be. Who will be left standing?