Introduction

A candidate for U.S. President ahead in the polls suddenly commits suicide. No one knows why. A botched jewel heist on the French Riviera during which an American bystander is killed, triggers a worldwide hunt by intelligence agencies for something the dead man left behind, a secret so explosive they will let nothing get in their way. When U.S. Homeland Security Special Agent Casey Ramirez uncovers a clue involving the dead American, the discovery catapults her into a deadly chase across Europe to find the dead man’s secret before it’s too late – for her . . . and the world.

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Excerpt

Prologue

“The Invisible Woman”

She exists for five and a half seconds. Face a white blur in the headlights, head turned away from the camera, impossible to identify as she disappears into the night shadows. And gone.

The notorious Lazaro cell phone video shot by coincidence – although dozens of conspiracy theories would later claim otherwise – through the windshield of a car on Key Biscayne’s Crandon Boulevard hours before the news broke. Yet nowhere is there a record of her visit at the exclusive Key Colony enclave where the fatal encounter with presidential candidate Governor Jeffrey “Win with Jeff” Smullen – at that moment, up seven and a quarter points in the polls and favored to be the next President – supposedly took place.

No witnesses. No confirming testimony from any of the guards at the gate-guarded community or the Secret Service assigned to guard Governor Smullen. Not a single second of video from even one of the security cameras at the complex. Nothing to substantiate the rumor that she was there, that she was a part of what happened, which was why the media dubbed her, “The Invisible Woman.”

When the Lazaro video emerged, the first evidence she actually existed, and the instant object of a bidding war between ABC, Apple News, Fox and MSNBC, the media wolf pack’s feeding frenzy went as one commentator put it, “Full Metal Psycho.” Lacking other targets, the spotlight turned on those who first broke the story: WFOR, the local CBS TV affiliate in Miami, and on the man who made the call, its news director, George Rees, who always swore he didn’t know a damn thing more than anyone else.

That night. Prime time. Digital clock on the screen counting down 4 days 11:36 hours to the election. On-set on-camera, one second there was Mace Cottrell, silver-tongued campaign manager for Governor Smullen smoothly repeating his talking points for the two-millionth time, when an aide rushed out and whispered something to him. Without a word, mid-sentence, Cottrell abruptly stood up – give the devil his due, talking head analysts would say later, no change in expression, he gave nothing away – yanked off his mike and pulling his cell phone from his jacket, bolted from the set as if, one liberal talk show host would later snarkily observe, “he had a bad case of diarrhea about to explode.”

In the control room, George Rees, middle-aged, salt-and-pepper hair and a Dad belly that betrayed an expense-account affinity for good restaurants, was about to signal his attractive blonde female anchor – Florida, after all – Julianne Marsh, to improvise for thirty seconds, when his iPhone vibrated. The one he reserved strictly for emergencies.

Rees took off his headset and put the phone to his ear. Afterwards, those present said his jaw literally dropped open in shock. As the technicians around him chattered, he made a set of vicious cutting signs to his neck to shut them up.

“Christ! Is this for real? You shitting me?” Rees said into the phone. It was later revealed that the person on the other end was Pete Flynn, a lieutenant on the Miami-Dade PD, who’d always been a good mutual backscratching source. A result of WFOR’s lucky location, on NW 25th Street in Hialeah, close to MDPD headquarters; ideal for after-work schmoozing with cops at the Longhorn, the local bar and grill.

Rees stared wide-eyed through the glass at the set, where Julianne – not exactly the highest IQ in a business that in Rees’ view had dumbed down to the point where a shot of chimpanzee DNA would be an improvement – was doing her best to tap-dance over the dead air time. She and fellow talking head, GOP strategist Lawrence “Tax cuts will solve everything” McHenry were speculating about what might have caused Mace Cottrell, not known for erratic behavior – certainly not for tossing away even a millisecond of free TV air time – to suddenly take off.

“Get back to me as soon as you can. And hey, I owe you, man,” Rees said, finishing the call while simultaneously checking the AP feed on his laptop. But it was the usual crap. New polls. Smullen up nine and a half in Ohio. Campaign stops by surrogates. Blah. Blah. Nothing. Nothing. Smullen was here in Miami, due to head tomorrow to Orlando and Tampa; Florida as always the ultimate swing state.

Rees put his headset back on and punched a button on his console to get Hailey, his on-the-scene reporter at the Smullen campaign HQ in downtown Miami. Around him, the noise level rose; newsroom phones started ringing, people talking. Something was happening.

“What? Hailey I can hardly hear you. What’s going on?” Rees listened. “Jesus! It’s impossible. Can you confirm? Wait, who’s with you? Let me talk to him.” He snapped his fingers several times for quiet, looking at the people around him, at this point all staring back at him.

Rees spoke into the headset mike again. “Jared, listen. Can you get inside? I need visuals. Anything. Inside, if humanly possible. Even if it’s inside the men’s room. If we can’t, I want Hailey standing outside the hotel; steps, front entrance, whatever. Get the hotel logo. I’m putting her on the second you’ve got a spot to point the camera. And get confirmation!” Pause. “From somebody, anybody. The fucking janitor! Put Hailey back on.” He waited. His staff was dead silent, eyes on him, ignoring the images on their computer screens and monitors. “Hailey, listen. We’re going with it. Get what you can and get ready to go on in exactly two minutes. This is it, kid. We’re going to you live, so be ready. C’mon, now. This is history.”

He turned to his crew and the set window and hit a button to talk to Julianne through her ear bud, eyes darting at a monitor to confirm they still had about thirty seconds on the bladder drug commercial – Florida! – that was running.

“Julianne, we have breaking news,” he said into the headset. “You need to stress it has not yet been confirmed by either the campaign or the Miami-Dade Police Department. I mean you have to make the non-confirm very very very strong so we’re legally covered or we’re in deep shit. Nod if you understand how serious this is.”

He watched her nod.

“Okay,” he said, taking a breath. “You need to stress there has been an unofficial report, which we cannot, I repeat not, confirm, but it’s been reported that Governor Jeffrey Smullen, candidate for President and currently ahead in all the polls, is dead.” Julianne’s eyes went wide. “Right now, that’s all we have. Hailey’s at the scene. You’ll cut to her as soon as she’s ready. I’ll cue you to go to her live.”

As they started the network’s “Breaking News” music and visual, Rees’ emergency iPhone buzzed again. He grabbed it.

“Yeah, Pete,” he said. “For real? Did he leave anything? I don’t believe it. Not for a second.” He listened again. “Okay, thanks. And Pete, I owe you forever. Whatever you want. Jack Daniels Twenty-seven, my first-born kid. I mean it, man, thanks.”

Rees looked around for an available reporter. Cody Robinson was talking to a female intern. “Cody!” Rees bellowed. “Get your ass and a camera over to the Key Colony Club on Key Biscayne! Now! Get over there. I don’t care if you get twenty speeding tickets.” And when Cody Robinson hesitated, shouted, “Go! Run!”

On the set, Julianne motioned McHenry into silence, faced straight into the camera, solemn as a church and shocked – not having to act for once – knowing her announcement would be played and re-played all around the world because they were scooping everyone in the universe, as the camera light lit, made the announcement.

“We interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you the following important breaking news regarding the Governor Smullen campaign in Miami. WFOR CBS Local News has received an unconfirmed report, and I must stress that as yet, this report is unconfirmed,” Rees behind the glass giving her a thumbs-up for that, “that Governor Jeffrey Smullen, the heavily-favored candidate for President, is dead. We have no further details. To get more on what’s happening, we’re switching live to our reporter on the scene, Hailey Squires.”

“Up on two,” Rees said and a technician brought up Hailey, who was standing, microphone in hand in the middle of a crowd, many with orange and white “Smullen for President” signs, on the steps in front of the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Miami.

Many in the crowd looked confused or stunned, having just heard the rumor. A number of women were crying, holding each other. One man with a sign on a stick repeatedly smacked it against a streetlight pole until others grabbed him. People milled about. No one seemed to know what to do. Several on-lookers shoved towards Hailey, who stood in an open space, spot-lit in the darkness by her cameraman, Will. The crew’s PM, Jared motioned people back to give her space. Two Miami-Dade PD officers watched, batons in hand, openly glaring at the TV crew.

Hailey brushed a stray hair from her forehead, looked straight at the camera and started: “Julianne, I would like to repeat, we have no official confirmation from either the Miami-Dade police or the Smullen campaign. In fact, there’s been no announcement and when I tried to speak to Campaign coordinator, Jack Applegate, who was going somewhere in a hurry, all I got was – and I quote – ‘No comment. We have nothing to say.’ Those were his exact words. Although the fact that he did not immediately deny the story is telling.

“Nevertheless, I have to tell our viewers, that we have an unconfirmed source who has indeed reported that Presidential candidate Governor Jeffrey Smullen died approximately one half hour ago, which would make it around,” glancing at her watch, “eight oh seven PM Eastern Time.” At that, a woman in the crowd cried out. “He died at a friend’s townhouse at the exclusive Key Colony Club in Key Biscayne. No one from the Smullen campaign has come forward to either substantiate or deny this claim. Now, and this is new – there’s a second very shocking report. The same unconfirmed source – I can’t say whether it is from inside the campaign or not – has reported that the cause of the Governor’s death was as a result of a gunshot by his own hand.” There was a murmur, an almost animal groan from the crowd. Someone gasped “Oh no!” as if what happened wasn’t real until she said it.

“Hailey,” Julianne broke in. “Are you saying Governor Smullen committed suicide?”

On-camera, Hailey holding her hand to her ear-receiver, nodded. “Julianne, that’s my understanding. Impossible as it seems, just days before an election that he appeared to have a good chance of winning, that’s exactly the information I’ve received. Again, let me stress, no one in the campaign or the MDPD is officially confirming anything, though” she looked around her, “as I said before, it’s telling that we’re not seeing or hearing anyone from the campaign contradicting this report. At the moment, they’re not talking – to us or anyone.”

At that moment, Julianne defined her career forever, making a statement that achieved the most-viewed score in YouTube history with nearly two-and-a-half billion views. She stared in blank confusion at the camera and simply blurted out loud what everyone else was thinking: “Why,” she said, “would someone about to be elected President kill himself?”

In the frenzied days that followed and as both parties scrambled to deal with the unprecedented situation of a major party suddenly without a candidate days before the election, Republicans calling for the election to be postponed, Democrats declaring that law and precedent made delay impossible, public curiosity more and more centered on “The Invisible Woman” on Crandon Boulevard. She had changed the world, though no one knew how – or why – or if she was even involved? Deemed a “person of interest,” there were sightings of her in cities from Vancouver to Buenos Aires. All proved false.

Nonstop chatter, tweets, and tens of thousands of images, real and Photoshopped, ping-ponged between the blogosphere, Twitter, the cable TV talkathons and Facebook threads thick as ship’s hawsers, many declaring with absolute certainty that she was a spy, an assassin, a pregnant mistress, or that she had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Despite all the speculation, as George Rees himself told the FBI agents who questioned him: “The fact is, not one person has offered a plausible explanation to either of the two central questions: Why? Why’d he do it? And how is it possible with all the media attention that no one’s been able to identify this so-called ‘Invisible Woman?’ More to the point, who is she?” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The protagonist, Casey is a driven woman, obsessed even. What is the thing that drives everything she does, the decisions she makes?
2. Readers have asked “Is any of this real? Does this really happen inside our government? Are any of the characters based on real persons?”
3. Who is Natalya? Is she really Casey’s sister Jessica?

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