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Skye Maddox is a contract assassin driven by both personal demons and professional discipline. Hired by grieving father Milo Williams to hunt down the chain of men responsible for his son’s death, Skye takes on a mission that escalates into a war with Washington, D.C.’s most dangerous underworld figures led by a man known only as Hetman. As she climbs Milo’s ladder of revenge, Skye uncovers a web of corruption that links drug dealers, judges, mobsters, and even international crime syndicates.
The story escalates through brutal shootouts, betrayals, and psychological games, as Skye pushes deeper into Hetman’s empire. becoming just another expendable weapon in someone else’s war.
Read an Excerpt
When Jayla stood, Skye raised a palm to stop her. “Yes. Yes, all right. I just finished an assignment, but it was part of a larger contract so I’m feeling like both the situations you mentioned. I’m on the job, and I just took a player off the board.”
Jayla jotted in her notebook. She always collected the euphemisms Skye used for her profession. “So, tell me about this latest assignment. How do you feel about this player you’ve taken off the board? Was it, in your mind, a just action?”
“You always want to go there,” Skye said, shaking her head. “What did I tell you? The first rule of the assassin’s doctrine. The target has got to deserve it.”
“Oh, yes,” Jayla said with a half-smile. “Your job, while criminal, does have rules
“I misspoke earlier,” Skye said, sliding a slim dagger out of her boot. “It’s not a job. It’s a profession. All professions have their rules. For doctors, rule number one is ‘do no harm’, right? For an assassin, it’s that the target has got to deserve it.” Skye began to absently flip the dagger in the air, catching it by its tip each time. “In this case, this bastard kidnapped my client’s son. I don’t know how they got him. My client kept his family totally under the radar. But once he got the ransom demand, the client agreed to pay, and the ransom money was in transit but not fast enough to suit the kidnappers. They killed the boy, I think just to make a point. Just to be snotty. The action took place overseas and no way the police would ever have gotten close to the killer.”
Jayla nodded. “I think I understand. So, you were hired to…”
“Correct the balance,” Skye said, standing.
About the Author:
Austin S. Camacho is the author of eight novels about Washington DC-based private eye Hannibal Jones, five in the Stark and O’Brien international adventure-thriller series, and the detective novel Beyond Blue. His short stories have been featured in several anthologies and he is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey. He is a past president of the Maryland Writers Association, past Vice President of the Virginia Writers Club, and one of the creators of the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity literary conference.
Guest Post
Topic: In the course of writing our books, there is always a fascinating piece of research
that we stumble on and it may, or may not make it into our stories. Really good research
should, of course, never be intrusive so here is your opportunity to let that little piece of
trivia or major research point have its moment in the sun.
For your post, it would be
wonderful if you could share a “Fun Fact”.
I suspect my research has me on some sort of FBI watch list. When I decided to create
a series about a professional assassin I knew I’d want her to be creative in doing her
work. That launched a lot of research into how to kill someone.
I discovered, for example, that you can end a life with a simple shot of the barbiturate
lorazepam. Of course, if the medical examiner who gets that body is any good at all he
will notice the puncture wound, and a blood test will reveal the barbiturate. But if you
want a death to appear to be of natural causes you would have to use a tiny .50-gauge
needle to inject something like adenosine into the semilunar fold on the inside of the eye.
But many of the most effective poisons are hard to come by unless you happen to be a doctor. It
was specifically researching how to get deadly substances and where they come from that I
stumbled upon a surprisingly common source of one of the deadliest of all substances.
Ricin is a toxic protein Just inhalation of this substance can cause a cough followed by nausea,
diarrhea, and aches and pains all over the body. If the dose is big enough, say through an
injection or swallowing the stuff, death will occur from damage to the heart and blood vessels. It
is feared like nerve agents are feared. Naturally you can’t just pick up ricin at the drug store. But
as I learned, the source is easy to obtain.
Ricin comes from the castor bean plant. It is in fact a pretty plant. In Africa it is a common
ornamental house plant. They make castor oil out of the bean of this plant, so it has a commercial
use. However, those beans also contain ricin. And the beans are not controlled substances in any
way. In fact, like almost everything else, you can order the seeds of the castor plant on Amazon.
Of course, a certain amount of work is required to get from those seeds to beans to a liquid
distilled out of the beans. Following this research down the rabbit hole revealed that it could all
be done fairly easily with no special equipment.
I’m not sure how easy it is to own ricin is a “fun fact” but for this thriller writer, it was both
interesting and useful in my books.
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ach success makes her a bigger target.
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