Red Line

It's been a year since retired National Transportation Safety Board aviation accident investigator Nick Phillips followed a trail of conspiracy to murder all the way to the doors of the Oval Office. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to operate a flight school, be a supportive husband to his wife of 25 years, and leave that ugly part of his past behind.

But when a magazine article and companion eBook claim to reveal the true story of airborne justice delivered by his hands, the anonymity of his small-town existence cannot protect him from the spotlight. Rumors of a movie deal, location scouting, and the possibility of a casting call whet the public's appetite for answers to a host of lingering questions about what really happened.

Among the legions of strangers invading Nick's refuge is Caitlin Monroe, a striking beauty who hires Nick to prove that someone tampered with an airplane and transformed it, along with her lover, into pieces scattered over miles of desert.

Although Nick's initial investigation agrees with the NTSB's findings that a combination of excessive speed, turbulence, and pilot error caused the crash, he soon uncovers a series of clues that call into question this obvious conclusion.

Everyone with something to lose or gain as a result of Nick's findings has a hidden agenda: Caitlin, who carries a Walther .380 ACP semi-automatic pistol as more than a fashion accessory; and in her wake, a sleazy private investigator running multiple scams at once; an airplane mechanic, hauling drugs on the side and arranging the occasional murder for hire; and the mechanic's lover, the dead pilot's wife, suspected of hiding a black widow past as the source of a fortune to die for.

Before long, Nick is swept into a maelstrom of danger that threatens to bury him alongside Caitlin in an unmarked grave.