What happens when two of the most dangerous men in the world are now in civilian life? What if one of those men is living on a houseboat? What if bad, bad men throw a teenage girl off the end of his dock? If you are Jackson, you dive into deep water and save the girl. But, when the ingrate disappears into the mean streets of Phoenix you don’t let that stand. You recruit your old partner, Blackhawk, and together you take on two of the bloodiest cartels in the Southwest. Yeah, that’s what happens.

Sam Lee Jackson's 2nd installment of Jackson Blackhawk series.One of the first people I met after moving onto my houseboat, named the Tiger Lily by the previous owner, was the marina’s jack of all trades handyman, a retired fifty year Chicago cop named Eddie. We found we had a lot in common when I had the houseboat dragged up into the maintenance yard to scrape the barnacles off the bottom of the boat. I hired Eddie to help. In the middle of the summer, it was hot, dirty, and tiring work. Eddie never complained and showed up every day. Showing a lot of grit for a man in his mid-seventies.So, when Eddie came to ask me a favor, how could I refuse? Eddie had moved to Arizona from Chicago. His nephew was a city cop in Cottonwood, an hour and a half north of Phoenix. Not big enough lakes nearby for Eddie, an avid crappie fisherman, so he moved onto a worn old River Runner at Pleasant Lake. He could still take the highway up to see family in just over an hour.It was really hard for a man like Eddie to ask a favor, but he had heard of Blackhawk’s and my exploits in saving the teenaged girl from the street gangs. So, he mustered his courage and came to me. I popped a PBR beer as soon as Eddie stepped aboard and handed it to him. I let Eddie get around to it.“My nephew in Cottonwood is a cop,” he said. I waited. “You know how people say crazy things in the heat of the moment.” I waited. “He has a girlfriend and wants to get married. But they were at a bar and drinking and this dickwad starts mouthing off about the girl. My nephew told the guy to shut up or he’d take his head off. Just crap you say in the heat of the moment. Two days later the guy shows up without a head.” He was looking at me hard to see my reaction. I didn’t give him one.“What’s he charged with?” I said.“Murder one.”“Takes more than threats to get indicted.”“They found a K-Bar combat knife at the scene. It was my nephews. He’d had it since he was stationed in the middle east. It had evidence on it, including my nephew’s fingerprints. They have him cold.”Eddie looked out the starboard window and watched the gulls zip by. He looked at the floor. Then he looked at me. I met his eyes. They didn’t waiver. He looked at me steadily. “He’s my sisters’ boy and he don’t lie. I could pay you something.”I waved my hand at that. “I can be available in the morning,” I said.We all expect barbaric terrorism to be somewhere across the ocean. It’s very shocking when we find in in small town America.

Captain Mendoza has a problem. In his effort to stop the Phoenix opioid epidemic he has Detective First Grade Boyce posing as a homeless bag lady, surveilling Cicero Paz and his band of drug dealing killers. But things are getting more and more dangerous and he needs someone who can infiltrate the gang, and protect his best detective. Someone who would be willing to step over any line and break any rule to do it. Who else would he ask but Jackson. That broken lance-carrier, that Quixotic rider of spavined causes. He of the tarnished armor and bent sword. That dubious savior of lost souls. That disposable hero. Yeah, that fool.

Jackson and Blackhawk were two of ten. Highly trained, highly skilled, highly dangerous operatives. Only one of the ten was a woman. Code name Indigo. She had to work twice as hard and accomplish twice as much to hold her own in that man’s world. What are the odds she would be back in their lives after all these years? And of course, it was not that simple. She couldn’t just come to visit, she had to bring the largest and deadliest sex trafficking ring in the Southwest hot on her heels. Looking for her blood. Nothing like an old friend dropping in unexpectedly to mess up your day.

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, and you are a cop, you answer it. It’s what you do. If someone near and dear to you is murdered and you are a cop, you turn over every rock and twist every arm to find the killer. It’s what you do. And when the killer makes you the next target, you don’t duck, you don’t flinch, and you don’t stop pushing. Now it’s a race. You get him before he gets you. If you are Detective First Grade Boyce, It’s what you do.