The Lior Batch
When co-workers start dying, the man who's kept his mouth shut for thirty-one years must decide whether to finally speak. Ray Calloway has spent his entire adult life on the night shift at the Lior Steel foundry , long enough to know that the furnaces keep secrets better than any worker. But when Petra Lund is found dead on the shop floor and Tomás Ferreira follows within days, the silence Ray has cultivated becomes impossible to maintain. Dana Voss, the plant's compliance officer, is asking questions no one wants answered. Her sister Diane pushes from a different angle. Sam Okafor, still grieving his mother Marsha's memory and watching Ray with suspicion, isn't sure he can trust the old night-shift operator he grew up around. Captain Hargrove's inquiries grow more pointed by the day. Ray's daughter June keeps calling, worried about the man she sees unraveling in front of a flickering television, bourbon in hand, a sealed blister pack unopened on the coffee table. At the center of it all is Furnace One , and what went into the last batch. Darius Kell, the foreman whose name surfaces in every whispered conversation about both deaths, insists on loyalty to the company. Mireya Lund, Petra's sister, wants answers the plant won't provide. Tom Brennan, a journalist with old ties to the foundry, has started digging. Victor Hale, the union steward, is torn between his people and his pension. Elliot Marsh and Haruki Sato, names mentioned only in careful, quiet conversations, seem to hold pieces of a puzzle that could burn the whole operation down. One batch. Two bodies. Thirty-one years of silence. And a choice Ray Calloway can no longer defer.