Whisper in the Pines

Mary Elizabeth Laverneaux is as beautiful and devious as she is deadly. She returns to her home in Moultrie, Georgia in the summer of 1938 with a mission…
…to get her little girl before Jebediah Collins finds her.

A year before, she had left her husband, Reggie, and their daughter Carlee, to follow the con man, living a life on the run with Collins and his ruthless partner, Ben. Shooting Collins to escape his clutches before taking off with $20,000 of his cash, Mary Elizabeth hopes to leave behind her errant ways and start life anew with Carlee — but Collins is on her trail.

At Whispering Pines, the Laverneaux family’s ancestral home and one time plantation, Reggie Laverneaux has found love again with a childhood friend, Emily Winters. Her husband Reggie has been approached with a proposal to reopen the family’s long shuttered textile mill by an investor from New York, Solomon Shaum, and the future begins to look brighter for Reggie and his new family.

Collins, attempting to find his money and his runaway shill, murders a local hotel clerk in Moultrie, the crime quickly tied to Mary Elizabeth.

Reggie must fight his demons — old and new — to protect the ones he loves because Jebediah Collins will stop at nothing to exact his revenge on the woman who betrayed him; and the bodies begin to pile up. Detectives Bill Mason and Cal Duggins are forced to act quickly to put an end to the terror ransacking the small southern town. When Collins kidnaps Carlee, Mary Elizabeth fears the worst; she knows what the con man is capable of first hand. Will Mary Elizabeth and Reggie find Carlee before Collins goes too far?

Whisper in the Pines

Mary Elizabeth gazed at the hand carved plaque on the hotel room door —206 The Magnolia. She remembered her last stay at the Peach, her wedding day, a warm Sunday in May when she married Reggie with all of Georgia’s elite in attendance. On their way to honeymooning in St. Augustine, he’d surprised her, arranging for the spacious presidential suite on the top floor, the Beauregard, for their wedding night. …

She pushed aside the fluttering curtains, allowing a cool evening breeze to waft in across her aching, sweaty body. A sagging double bed with a pitted brass headboard and threadbare chenille spread covered two lumpy pillows, apropos she thought to what her life had now become. Not exactly the Ritz, is it Mrs. Laverneaux?...

The image reflected back at her from a mirror showed an ugly bruise under her right eye, now faded to a sickening yellow-orange…
Collins had slammed a fist into her face, and then whipped her with a razor strop. Filling the bathtub, Mary Elizabeth was thankful for the hot water. …

Palms pressed on either side of the tub she lowered herself into the steamy water, allowing the liquid to envelop her entire body as it rose luxuriously to her chin making her feel safe for the first time in months, choosing to believe the lie and deny the looming storm about to be unleashed.

Whisper in the Pines

Eyes closed, holding her breath, she slid below the surface, listening to the rhythmic beating of her own heart. Collins and the shambles her life had become faded into darkness as images of Whispering Pines and Carlee filled her head. How did it get to this? Leaning back against the hard porcelain, uncontrolled torrents of tears streamed down her cheeks and loud desolate sobs reverberated through the room.

Mary Elizabeth looked back over her shoulder. Silhouetted figures were moving in the shadows below. In the eerie silence, she heard feet scuffling as deputies bumped into objects strewn around the darkened mill. She tucked her revolver into the waistband of her skirt, slid it down the front of panties and tapped lightly on the door… The room looked macabre. A dozen candles cast eerie shadows, flickering like dancing ghouls along chipped, paint peeled walls. Her eyes darted, searching for Carlee curled up in a leather swivel chair in a corner behind her father’s desk. Her eyes were sunken with dark circles underneath… Leaping from her chair, Carlee started to cry, but Collins pulled back on the hammer of his gun, pointed it at her and growled. “Don’t you dare move one more inch!” … Waving his gun at Mary Elizabeth, he ordered her to turn around, “Get them hands of yours up against the damn wall.” … Mary Elizabeth backed up, eyes fixed on a trembling Carlee. … “I hope for your sake this here box got what I think it does, Collins said.”… He opened the strongbox and pulled out a packet of bills.

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

The murder of a young prostitute followed by a police shootout on a cold, deserted beach on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario draws FBI Special Agent Ted Lansing into the most lethal case of his career.

Agent Lansing and his beautiful partner, Jennifer Fallana, have three months to lay bare the Subterfuge Conspiracy, recover a shipment of stolen radioactive cesium pellets smuggled into the country across Lake Ontario and thwart the detonation of a dirty bomb planned for New Year’s Eve on the crowded National Mall in Washington D.C.

From upstate New York to Paris, to Yemen, and back to Washington D.C., Fargo Blake, ex military, cold and deadly, has been tasked by the true conspirators to eliminate their Arab co conspirators and lay blame for the attack squarely shoulders of the Arabs —The perfect terrorist plot.

Backed by a cabal of politically powerful men tied to the highest echelons of the United States government and a rogue CIA agent, Colin Mills, the conspiracy reaches all the way into the halls of the U.S. Senate. The conspiracy’s endgame: discredit the first elected Hispanic president’s credibility on global terrorism, bring down his administration, deny him a second term and elect their hand picked successor.

Can the United States survive the attack?
Who are the real conspirators?

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

An incoming alert appeared on Ted Lansing’s computer screen.He clicked on a flashing icon and a prompt appeared: INTERPOL: National Central Bureau (NCB) - ENTER PASSWORD AND A VALID AGENCY IDENTIFICATION NUMBER.
A man’s face appeared on screen. “Hello, Agent Lansing, Inspector Mendes here in Paris. An hour ago, a surveillance video came across into my possession with you named as primary contact. I am streaming it right now.
Lansing watched a man in a business suit come down what looked like a
jetway. He passed a sign on the wall, Sortez à Gauche, but the man’s face was too deep in shadow to see clearly. “Where was this taken?” “It is from a security tape at de Gaulle, taken at 1:45 PM today. Keep watching.”
The figure emerged from the jetway into a brightly lit terminal. “Fargo Blake? What in hell is he doing in Paris? Last time we had him on our radar here he was in New Jersey. How did Interpol get this?”

“The FBI sent still pictures of this Blake character and the Police Nationale flagged him using facial recognition software. The communiqué was tagged Follow - Do Not Detain – Notify FBI – Special Agent in Charge, Theodore Lansing.

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

I have additional surveillance footage of him exiting the terminal and getting into a taxi, but the police lost him in traffic.Paris is a bitch by mid-afternoon. My men picked up the driver for questioning and he gave us the location, Hotel du Continent onRue du Mont Thabor. He’s registered under the name Robert Minot of Dallas, Texas and listed his occupation as a software consultant for a company that never heard of him. I have a copy of his forged passport on my desk. I will send it.”

Do your people have any idea why he’s there in Paris?
Mendes didn’t know, but confirmed that Blake made three calls from his hotel room within thirty minutes of registering. Lansing downloaded the information.
“One more thing Agent Lansing. There was an attachment to the communiqué that a Colin Mills of your CIA was to be contacted as well.” There was long pause as Lansing tried to make sense of Mill’s request.
“Inspector, please hold off on notification for now. I’ll contact Mills myself.”
Lansing hung up and called Albreda’s office in Washington. “Felicia, did your office add Mills to the BOLO request that went out to Interpol?”

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

At seven PM, Blake woke, showered and dressed. He slid the Ruger behind his back under his belt, rode the elevator down and hailed a cab. “22 Rue Le Verrier,” he told the driver.
Arienne Metivier’s apartment building looked old-world and expensive. Four stories high, most units had ornate baroque balconies overlooking the street. Inside a small vestibule, Blake found a row of call buttons. A. Metivier - 4A.
A sexy voice came through an unseen intercom somewhere above him. “Bonsoir Robére,” followed by an irritating buzz as an inner glass door covered with a wrought iron trellis swung open. Blake stepped into the old fashion elevator and pulled the brass accordion door closed. Arienne was waiting for him in the hallway in a hot little black cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes. Her hair, up when he’d met her on the plane, now flowed across slender bare shoulders. She moved in close, put her arms around his waist, went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Come, inside Robére. I took to heart what you said about wanting to see the real Paris. I made a reservation at a wonderful little place, Chez Georges on Rue du Mail. True Paris you requested and that is what you shall have. But, first, we sit a while, we talk and we have drinks and hors d'œuvres. I hope you like patê and authentic French brie.”

Arienne, holding Blake’s hand, gave him a quick tour of her spacious apartment. When he looked into a second bedroom, clearly decorated for a man, she sensed uneasiness and explained that she had a housemate named Alain, also a flight attendant for Air France.

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

Alain’s route, Paris to Rio de Janeiro and Ariennne’s to Montreal rarely intersected. The Rue Le Verrier apartment was far too expensive on one flight attendant’s salary. Currently in Rio, Alain would not return for a week. By then, Arienne would be back in Montreal.
She patted his shoulder, “So you see, Robére, there is no need to be, how do you say, jaloux. Besides, she laughed, “Alain does not even like girls.”

Arienne held up a bottle of Jack Daniels. “I remembered what you ordered on the flight. It is not so easy to find it here in Paris. But, as you will learn, I am quite the resourceful girl when I wish to be.”
By their third drink, curled up on the couch, Blake slid the strap of her black dress over a shoulder and kissed her perfumed neck — evoking a soft purring sound. “That is very nice, Robére, but it is nearly nine o’clock and I am famished.Why do we not first have that lovely dinner at Chez George, see Paris by night and then come back here to my apartment? You will have seen the Ville des Lumières, what you call the City of Lights with your Parisienne and my flight is not until tomorrow night.
Arienne nibbled on Blake’s earlobe and whispered. “The Paris sunrise, mon cherie from my terrasse,esttrès beau. In the morning I shall prepare for you my special Belgian waffles and I have bought some delightful English sausage.”

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

Lansing and Falladi were about to leave the office in New York when the phone rang. It was Albreda. He motioned Falladi to wait, sat back down and cradled the receiver to his ear.
“We know why Blake is in Paris and it’s not for any sit-down with Ibrahim Farah. Consensus here is that Blake’s there to assassinate the old man. That first call he made after checking in was to a bistro known to be one of Ibrahim Farah’s hangouts. Arshala called the number on multiple occasions. According to Inspector Mendes, it’s an al Queda friendly place. We’re not sure yet, what the whole story is, but Intelligence thinks we’ve all been barking up the wrong tree. This is no longer some joint alliance between al Queda and a bunch of crazed militia-Nazi-white supremacists — If it ever was.

One-by-one, Blake has been eliminating ties with the Arabs and Farah is the last loose end. Intelligence thinks that once Blake takes him out, whatever they are planning will go down. How do you want to play this on your end, Ted?”
“What are my options?”
“I can have the locals in Paris pick him up, maybe even Interpol, but that could prove problematic because then we wont get our hands on him for days, maybe weeks. I don’t know how long if he fights extradition.”

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

“I sense an or in there someplace.”
“Or we let Mills do what his spooks do best —snatch him off the street and put him on a plane back to New York. Hangar B-34, at JFK, it’s a secure facility, our people, no questions asked. You’ll have him in a safe house under an assumed name in ten hours. Better to apologize than ask permission.”
“That begs the question, Felicia. Can you trust Mills?”

Blake paused in the doorway of Arienne’s building and peered in both directions before stepping off the single step. There was little foot traffic. He tried to detect movement inside a line cars parked along the curb but the dim lighting made it impossible to see inside any of them. Arienne squeezed his arm and smiled. Blake relaxed, deciding he was being paranoid. No one knew he was in Paris except Nugent and the Actor. Nugent’s admonition to get in and get out with no screwing around kept nagging at him but still, Arienne was too beautiful to pass up.

They strolled to her car parked alongside the curb a hundred feet down Rue Le Verrier. “You will drive?” she asked, handing him a set of keys on a rabbit’s foot keychain. “My lapin chanceux,” for luck.
Blake joked, seeing her tiny Smart Car. “Is this a roller-skate with an engine?”
“Roller-skate?” Arienne asked, “I do not know this word. My car is a Daimler, a diesel.”
Blake put both hands behind his back and mimed skating.

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

“Ah, patin à roulettes,” she laughed. “You are too funny, Robére. Oui, it doesresemble, as you say, a roller-skate.”
Blake held the door open as Arienne slid in. Coming around to the other side, he couldn’t help thinking how much he liked her lilting accent and easy smile. Nugent’s words flooded back to him, interrupting the moment. “In and out, Fargo. Don’t get involved.”

Thirty yards back, in a black sedan on the opposite side of the street two men waited. “Wake up, Sid. There on the move.”
Arienne directed Blake to Boulevard Saint-Michel. When they crossed Pont Saint-Michel, he looked up into the rear-view mirror, certain he’d seen the dark Mercedes several times before. He made a sharp turn on Rue de Rivoli and sped up. Arienne watched the speedometer climb to 85 km/hr.

“There is no need to go so fast, Robére. We have plenty of time.”
Blake ignored her, kept one eye in the mirror and began to weave in and out between cars. A few more blocks with his eye darting from the mirror back to the road the Mercedes was gone and Blake decided his imagination was running away with him. He eased back to the speed limit.

Not following his gut instinct was a mistake Fargo Blake rarely made.

The Subterfuge Conspiracy

Restaurant Chez Georges, a typical French cafe had banquette seating along the Walls, with single chairs opposite each small table. The room was filled with well-dressed urban professionals. A jazz trio played softly enough for diners to talk.
“If you don’t mind, Darlin’, I’ll sit on the inside,” Blake said. “I want to people-watch, get the flavor of the place.” He held her chair then slid in, facing out with a clear view of the front door.
A waiter appeared, asking in French if they would like to order drinks before dinner. The only word Blake understood was, vin. Arienne translated.

Blake looked up from the wine list and caught a quick glimpse of a man’s face peering in through the restaurant’s front window. When the man saw Blake looking back at him, he turned around. Blake looked up again the face was gone.
He scanned the crowded room for an escape route in case his growing paranoia wasn’t paranoia. There were no side doors, but a narrow hallway at the far end had three signs on the wall — Hommes, Femmes and Sortie de Secours. The first two he understood, the third, Blake hoped meant emergency exit. Excusing himself, he started for the men’s room.
A steel door with a panic bar was at the far end of a long hallway. He opened it a few inches and looked out. A man in a dark blue pea coat was standing at the opening of a garbage-strewn alley, one hand on what looked like a gun the other holding a radio. He’d been made.

The Sinai Artifact

The murder of a young prostitute followed by a police shootout on a cold, deserted beach on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario draws FBI Special Agent Ted Lansing into the most lethal case of his career.

Agent Lansing and his beautiful partner, Jennifer Fallana, have three months to lay bare the Subterfuge Conspiracy, recover a shipment of stolen radioactive cesium pellets smuggled into the country across Lake Ontario and thwart the detonation of a dirty bomb planned for New Year’s Eve on the crowded National Mall in Washington D.C.

From upstate New York to Paris, to Yemen, and back to Washington D.C., Fargo Blake, ex military, cold and deadly, has been tasked by the true conspirators to eliminate their Arab co conspirators and lay blame for the attack squarely shoulders of the Arabs —The perfect terrorist plot.

Backed by a cabal of politically powerful men tied to the highest echelons of the United States government and a rogue CIA agent, Colin Mills, the conspiracy reaches all the way into the halls of the U.S. Senate. The conspiracy’s endgame: discredit the first elected Hispanic president’s credibility on global terrorism, bring down his administration, deny him a second term and elect their hand picked successor.

Can the United States survive the attack?
Who are the real conspirators?

The Sinai Artifact

The murder of an antiquities curator at the Smithsonian Institution brings FBI agent, Ted Lansing to the prestigious Washington museum. He again steps into an all-consuming case that takes him from the comforts of his new life to the barren, mountainous terrain of the Sinai Peninsula in search of the killer and an elusive piece of granite, The Sinai Artifact. The curator’s death and subsequent recovery of the priceless artifact becomes a race across the globe, first to the Rome and ultimately to the Middle East, all with deadly consequences. What secrets do the objects hold, and how many innocent victims must die in search of the greatest archeological discovery of all time? Or is the oddly shaped stone something else entirely? From Lansing's initial discovery that his prime suspect is not who she first appeared to be, to a cast of conspiratorial characters, the case takes Lansing halfway around the world. One time German Stasi agent, Hans Richter Richter, now in the employ of Russia’s clandestine service, orders the murder of an elderly Vatican priest who comes too close to the artifact's true secret, but it is only the start of Richter's murderous quest for the priceless stone. Roadblocks to Richter's pursuit of the treasure, and Lansing's relentless hunt to uncover the secret buried in the Sinai, are thwarted by a formidable adversary of Richter, linguist, and expert in biblical languages, Russian archaeologist Irina Kazakov. But for which side is she working? What are the Russian's hiding, keeping from the world? Why is the Catholic Church so interested in recovering the oddly shaped stone? Does the centuries old monastery of Santa Katerina and its complement of Greek Orthodox priests hold answer?