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  PRAISE FOR BARBARA NICKLESS

  “A stunner of a thriller. From the first page to the last, Blood on the Tracks weaves a spell that only a natural storyteller can master. And a guarantee: you’ll fall in love with one of the best characters to come along in modern thriller fiction, Sydney Rose Parnell.”

  —Jeffery Deaver, #1 international bestselling author

  “Beautifully written and heartbreakingly intense, this terrific and original debut is unforgettable. Please do not miss Blood on the Tracks. It fearlessly explores our darkest and most vulnerable places—and is devastatingly good. Barbara Nickless is a star.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, winner of Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark awards and author of Say No More

  “Both evocative and self-assured, Barbara Nickless’s debut novel is an outstanding, hard-hitting story so gritty and real you feel it in your teeth. Do yourself a favor and give this bright talent a read.”

  —John Hart, multiple Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author of Redemption Road

  “Fast-paced and intense, Blood on the Tracks is an absorbing thriller that is both beautifully written and absolutely unique in character and setting. Barbara Nickless has written a twisting, tortured novel that speaks with brutal honesty of the lingering traumas of war, including and especially those wounds we cannot see. I fell hard for Parnell and her four-legged partner and can’t wait to read more.”

  —Vicki Pettersson, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Swerve

  “The aptly titled Blood on the Tracks offers a fresh and starkly original take on the mystery genre. Barbara Nickless has fashioned a beautifully drawn hero in take-charge, take-no-prisoners Sydney Parnell, former Marine and now a railway cop battling a deadly gang as she investigates their purported connection to a recent murder. Nickless proves a master of both form and function in establishing herself every bit the equal of Nevada Barr and Linda Fairstein. A major debut that is not to be missed.”

  —Jon Land, USA Today bestselling author

  “Blood on the Tracks is a bullet train of action. It’s one part mystery and two parts thriller with a compelling protagonist leading the charge toward a knockout finish. The internal demons of one Sydney Rose Parnell are as gripping as the external monster she’s chasing around Colorado. You will long remember this spectacular debut novel.”

  —Mark Stevens, author of the award-winning Allison Coil Mystery series

  “Nickless captures you from the first sentence. Her series features Sydney Rose Parnell, a young woman haunted by the ghosts of her past. In Blood on the Tracks, she doggedly pursues a killer, seeking truth even in the face of her own destruction. The true mark of a heroine. Skilled in evoking emotion from the reader, Nickless is a master of the craft, a writer to keep your eyes on.”

  —Chris Goff, author of Dark Waters

  “Barbara Nickless’s Blood on the Tracks is raw and authentic, plunging readers into the fascinating world of tough railroad cop Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell and her Malinois sidekick, Clyde. Haunted by her military service in Iraq, Sydney Rose is brought in by the Denver Major Crimes Unit to help solve a particularly brutal murder, leading her into a snake pit of hate and betrayal. Meticulously plotted and intelligently written, Blood on the Tracks is a superb debut novel.”

  —M. L. Rowland, author of the Search and Rescue Mystery novels

  “Blood on the Tracks is a must-read debut. A suspenseful crime thriller with propulsive action, masterful writing, and a tough-as-nails cop, Sydney Rose Parnell. Readers will want more.”

  —Robert K. Tanenbaum, New York Times bestselling author of the Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi legal thrillers

  “Blood on the Tracks is a superb story that rises above the genre of mystery . . . It is a first-class read.”

  —Denver Post

  “Nickless’s writing admirably captures the fallout from a war where even survivors are trapped, forever reliving their trauma.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Part mystery, part antiwar story, Nickless’s engrossing first novel, a series launch, introduces Sydney Rose Parnell . . . Nickless skillfully explores the dehumanizing effects resulting from the unspeakable cruelties of wartime as well as the part played by the loyalty soldiers owe to family and each other under stressful circumstances.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An interesting tale . . . The fast pace will leave you finished in no time. Nickless seamlessly ties everything together with a shocking ending.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “If you enjoy suspense and thrillers, then you will [want] Blood on the Tracks for your library. Full of the suspense that holds you on the edge of your seat, it’s also replete with acts of bravery, moments of hope, and a host of feelings that keep the story’s intensity level high. This would be a great work for a book club or reading group with a great deal of information that would create robust dialogue and debate.”

  —Blogcritics

  “In Blood on the Tracks, Barbara Nickless delivers a thriller with the force of a speeding locomotive and the subtlety of a surgeon’s knife. Sydney and Clyde are both great characters with flaws and virtues to see them through a plot thick with menace. One for contemporary thriller lovers everywhere.”

  —Authorlink

  “Riveting suspense. Nickless writes with the soul of a poet. Dead Stop is a dark and memorable book.”

  —Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassins

  “A deliciously twisted plot that winds through the dark corners of the past into the present where nothing—and nobody—is as they seem. Dead Stop is a first-rate, can’t-put-down mystery with a momentum that never slows. I am eager to see what Barbara Nickless comes up with next—she is definitely a mystery writer to watch.”

  —Margaret Coel, New York Times bestselling author of the Wind River Mystery series

  “The twists and turns . . . are first-rate. Barbara Nickless has brought forth a worthy heroine in Sydney Parnell.”

  —BVS Reviews

  “Nothing less than epic . . . A fast-paced, action-packed, thriller-diller of a novel featuring two of the most endearing and toughest ex-jarheads you’ll ever meet.”

  —Mysterious Book Report

  ALSO BY BARBARA NICKLESS

  Blood on the Tracks

  Dead Stop

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Barbara Nickless

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503901513

  ISBN-10: 1503901513

  Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

  For my father, Kirby Chase Stafford, who stood watch long ago.

  And for Ronald Cree.

  You are gone much too soon, my friend.

  CONTENTS

  ON WATCH

  MEXICO CITY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER
12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  ONE MONTH LATER

  CHAPTER 29

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  AMBUSH READING GROUP GUIDE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ON WATCH

  The call came late on an August evening while Jeremy Kane was upstairs, rocking his infant daughter.

  When the phone buzzed, Kane shifted Megan in his arms and pulled his cell from his pocket. An out-of-state number he’d never seen. He pressed a button and silenced the call.

  Megan’s breath hitched as if she would fuss, and Kane rubbed her back. She swallowed her cry and nestled into his shoulder, her tiny hand a petal against his throat.

  His bum leg ached. Closing his eyes, he shifted his weight. He inhaled the baby’s clean, sweet scent and listened to his older daughter singing softly in the next room.

  At moments like these, the war and its aftershocks seemed very far away.

  Still, Kane knew there were some things you couldn’t fix. No matter how much help you had. No matter what interventions people ran on your behalf. No matter how hard you tried.

  Some things stayed broken. A bum leg. A bad memory.

  But he believed in work-arounds. If you had the sense God gave a goat, you learned to trim back, cut down, reroute. You accepted that no plan came with guarantees, and when life blocked one lane, you found another.

  He had his family. He mostly had his health. And he had a good job as a security officer for Denver’s Regional Transportation District—the RTD. The gig wasn’t the life he’d dreamed of before the war. It wasn’t medical school. It wasn’t a bright, sunny office and a steady stream of patients and a world that admired a man’s intelligence and awarded him money and accolades for his dedication.

  But there were compensations. Like these times with his girls.

  The phone buzzed again. Same number.

  A cold thread wriggled its way into Kane’s thoughts. Lester Crowe.

  For Crowe, the war was always right there. In his face or on his back. In his dreams, and always on his mind. When things got too dark, he would call Kane from someone’s cell or use the phone in whatever dive bar he found himself in when the shakes hit.

  Kane answered with a soft hello.

  “Someone’s been following me,” Crowe said without preamble. “Trying to smoke my ass.”

  An icy fear knifed into Kane’s neck, right at the base of his skull.

  He kept his voice soft. “Hey, Crowe, you okay?”

  “I was until some fancy suit started following me. Watching me eat my food and scratch my ass. Watching me every time I take a shit, I swear. Not safe anywhere. It’s fucking Iraq all over again.”

  A week ago, Kane would have tried to talk Crowe down from whatever mental ledge his war buddy had crawled out on. But that was before Kane began digging into the past. Before he learned just how wrong things had gone in Iraq. And how it had spilled out over here.

  Maybe someone had noticed his online research. The drive-bys and photos. Maybe he’d endangered his entire fireteam.

  “Crowe—”

  Megan woke with a mewling cry. Kane stood and jounced her in his arm. He walked to the window, taking a sentry’s position above the quiet street. “What are you talking about?”

  “Some nutso shit, man.”

  Kane caught the rumble of a truck through the line. A horn honked. Then Crowe said, “It’s like we’re the heroes in a fucked-up movie. And Iraq is the monster that won’t stay dead.”

  “Where are you? I’ll come and get you. Doesn’t matter where you are.”

  “I’m calling from a pay phone. Only way that’s secure. An hour from now I’ll be in another state. You hang with your family, take care of your own. Stay on watch and be careful. These guys are serious trouble. They’re probably listening in right now.”

  Kane did not want to go down the path his friend had taken. “Crowe, c’mon. You been smoking something?”

  “I’m telling you. It’s Iraq, back with a mouthful of teeth. We should never have done what we did. It was wrong, man. It was so wrong.”

  Kane swallowed down the panic and reminded himself this was, after all, Crowe. Unstable in the best of times. Crowe had gone radio silent right after he returned to the States. And a man didn’t disappear from his Marine brethren unless there was something very wrong with what was bouncing around between his ears.

  But still.

  Kane considered what he’d learned this last week. Covert deals, illegal weapons, faked reports. There were enough pieces missing that he couldn’t yet make out the overall image. But what he could see made him think that what Crowe had going on was less PTSD than self-preservation.

  “You been to see anyone, Crowe? You know, just to talk. You sound—”

  “Paranoid?” Crowe snorted. “Don’t give me that bullshit. These dudes will hand everyone on our team their asses and make us thank them for the pleasure. It’s something to do with that Iraqi kid whose mom got killed. He’s in the middle of this clusterfuck.”

  This was a sucker punch. “Malik?”

  “He saw something over there. Those weapons. Remember that?”

  The panic clawed free and tried to pull Kane down. Megan began to fuss. He walked her back and forth across the room, struggling to pull up an image of the small boy who’d been adopted by the Marines after his mother’s murder. “You think they’re after you because of—”

  He stopped himself, abruptly aware that if Crowe’s fear was grounded in reality, someone really might be listening.

  “Because of that?” he finished weakly.

  “Only thing I can think of. Look, I gotta go. Stay on watch, brother. Remember what we used to say? Just ’cause you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

  Crowe disconnected.

  Kane’s thoughts flew in a hundred different directions. No question, Crowe was crazy. He saw things no one else did. He babbled on about conspiracy theories and space aliens. He’d never learned to rest his head anywhere for more than a night or two.

  Then again, given what Kane had learned, maybe right now Lester Crowe was the sanest man on the team.

  A sound at the bedroom door made Kane spin around, one hand gripping Megan, the other reaching for a nonexistent gun.

  His four-year-old daughter, Haley, stared up at him, eyes wide. “Daddy?”

  Heart racing, Kane sucked in air and forced his hand back to his side.

  “You should be in bed, Haley.” His voice came out all wrong. Sharp and angry.

  Both Megan and Haley began to cry.

  An hour later, after Kane had gotten both girls to bed, he stood at the front window and watched until his wife pulled up in their ancient Toyota. He waited until she was safely inside, the garage door down, the doors and windows locked. He listened to her complain about his sudden moodiness while she got ready for bed, then waited some more, until her soft breathing told him she was asleep.

  Then he got out the handgun he’d hidden from her and stood watch through the night.

  Crowe might be crazy, but Kane knew better than most that sometimes the monsters were real.

  For the next few days, Kane tried to call Tucks and Sarge, the other members of his fireteam. Neither picked up. Both men went in and out of Kane’s life like it had a revolving door. So he left messages. I might have screwed up. Watch your back. He installed an alarm system over Sherri’s protests that they couldn’t afford it and insisted Sherri and the girls stay at her parents’ house while he was at work.

  “What’s wrong?” Sherri asked
as he stuffed books, bathing suits, and pool toys into Haley’s Shopkins backpack. “Why are you acting like this?”

  What could he say? That something—he didn’t know what exactly—had happened in Iraq, and he had been looking into it. Just a little local recon during his free time, and the details he had uncovered so far indicated . . . what? Shadows, really. Whispers in the dark.

  Just ’cause you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out to get you. This was true, but the fact was there had been no mysterious visitors, no cars lurking at corners, no one tailing him. He was starting to think that maybe Crowe was crazy and that maybe some of that had rubbed off on him.

  He dropped all his attempts to look into what had happened in Iraq and made every effort to prove to anyone watching that he was only a simple husband, father, and wage earner.

  A week later, after dropping off his family with Sherri’s parents, he bounded into Denver’s Union Station, tugging on the damp uniform shirt clinging to his back in August’s electric-blanket heat.

  Saturday night at Union Station was Kane’s favorite shift. Tonight he took in his surroundings with his usual all-in stare of a combat vet who had done more patrols than a bear had hair on its ass. He watched the swirling, restless throngs of people—window-shoppers, travelers, drinkers, gourmands, loiterers, and likely pickpockets. He studied the stores and kiosks, the nooks and corners, the doorways and high, wide windows. He inhaled the scents of hamburgers frying and coffee brewing, noted the overstuffed waste cans and the crumpled trash tossed beneath benches, and cocked an ear for the whoosh of trains and the hum of passengers disembarking outside.

  He scanned for abandoned backpacks, wet paper bags, wires, and pipes, and for any man or woman who sweated and shook and refused to meet his gaze.

  During Kane’s first month on the job, the RTD had received twenty-two bomb threats, thirty-three call-ins for suspicious packages, two alleged suicide bombers who promised death and destruction, and one real bomb placed under a light-rail platform near the football stadium, a bomb that had been quickly detected and quietly disposed of.

  The public knew nothing about it.

  Kane had found the bomb—a pressure cooker filled with nails, ball bearings, and black powder with an estimated fifteen hundred–foot blast radius. After that, he understood that if the short-term memory issues caused by a head injury in Iraq meant he couldn’t be a doctor, he could be a shepherd—not a fair trade, but a good one. His prize was the safety of the people—their innocence something to both envy and protect. Maybe finding and removing a terrorist or a bomb was not so very different from rooting out a virus before it could harm an otherwise healthy patient.