A Slow Fire
Forty-three minutes parked across from a run-down motor lodge, a cold cup of coffee, and a Canon lens aimed at a second-floor window. Cleo Marsh knows surveillance is ninety percent boredom and ten percent heart-stopping revelation, she just didn't expect the revelation to change everything. The photograph catches what she needed. But it also catches something she didn't: a face that pulls her into an investigation far more dangerous than the job she signed on for. As Cleo digs deeper into a tangle of missing people, buried family histories, and a conspiracy that has been quietly smoldering for years, every name on her list becomes either a witness, or a threat. With Ava Garrison, her closest ally, urging caution, and a cast of circling suspects, a grieving widow, a corporate fixer, a reluctant whistle-blower, a man with everything to lose, Cleo races to piece together what really happened before the last witness disappears. Each clue raises the temperature. Each day brings her closer to the source of the slow fire that's been burning since long before she ever picked up a camera. Now the question isn't whether the truth will surface. It's whether Cleo will still be standing when it does.