How do you keep people believing in the system, the country and its ethics, when you have trusted people and leaders clearly violating those ethics? How do you hide them away from Joe and Jill Henry Public? In this action crime thriller, you get the answer.
You need a Hider.
Meet Seanan Kilkelly.
He’s a Hider. He hides the fruit that has turned rotten, much too rotten for the well-regarded justice system to handle or bring to the public’s attention by taking it all to court; given that the court system frequently drops charges just to focus on the easy cases. And that allows crimes to go unpunished, further destroying the public’s trust.
Seanan is part of the justice system, but keeps well away from it. The stench of injustice that is often left is enough to make him grind his teeth in frustration.
He has now had a gutful of baby-sitting mindless creeps, crooks, and those with no human empathy for the people they have wronged; he is now retiring to have another operation on the burn wounds he received in his last combat operation as a Ranger. As most severe burn wounds do, they have tightened up with the passing of time and now have to be released yet again, just to allow the scarred tissue to stretch and new healing to take place. Something most burns victims have to repeatedly go through. As some of his wounds are internal, it will take time and some pain to fix, but he still can’t wait to get the operation done.
Once over and recuperated, he will go on holiday to see his ancestorial homeland, Ireland, then on to Scotland, and eventually retire to the life of pleasant, unhurried bachelorhood down at his small seaside home in Nassau on the Bahamas. That was his plan. Nearly perfect!
Nearly.
But sometimes, fate throws a curve ball. This time, it throws him a beauty. Her name is Lilianna Marchant. She is the wife of a dead mindless criminal thug, Frank Marchant, son of the brutal and psychopathic Peter Marchant, now the scion of the successful Marchant criminal dynasty. Seanan had once met Frank, and not in a nice way. Frank lost. Peter Marchant needs Liliana’s two children, Suzy and Daniel, as they are the only heirs to the Marchant criminal dynasty and fortune. Without them, the Marchant dynasty is over. He wants them, especially Daniel, as he intends to meld him into another cold-blooded criminal mastermind, just like him.
Liliana can see the bonds tightening; their freedom now severely restricted, and she, Suzy and Daniel, flee the family compound and take a terrified run to Washington, D. C. Her lawyer knows of Seanan, gets Seanan to look after her as the FBI had unwittingly dropped the ball. Seanan soon sorts it out, but the FBI has to keep this quiet as they now assume Peter Marchant has spies on the inside. Their inside. They want the spies found and gone. But Lilianna has brought a surprise; reams of data on the Marchant’s years of ongoing criminal activities; it shows where all the bodies are buried.
It is a win for the FBI of epic proportions. But it has to stay quiet. Marchant must never know what they are doing. It is then decided that Liliana, Suzy and Daniel will go hide with Seanan at his holiday home at Nassau in the Bahamas, a short hop over the water to Miami and then to the Warden Burns Center in Orlando, the perfect place for his burn injuries to be treated. Liliana is over the moon excited. She is developing deep feelings for Seanan, the Hider, and wants them to stay together. It was a brilliant plan. Who would ever guess where they were?
It was almost perfect.
Almost.