THE DROWNED RAT
Valentine "Val" Scoffer and Barry Thomas have been friends since childhood. Val is an FBI agent assigned to the Kansas City Division office and Barry is a systems engineer for a communication company in Ohio.
Val is the lead investigator on an organized crime case that after 18 months is coming before a grand jury. What Val doesn't know is that a mole in the FBI has sold out to the Mob, destroyed key evidence and betrayed two confidential informants. One of the informants, drowned after being tortured, is found in the river. The second, Jimmy, a man of sketchy qualities, is missing.
In Ohio, Barry unwitting crosses paths with a stalker, Holly Bennet. An unstable woman that doesn't hesitate to use social media to malign anyone she thinks has crossed her. Holly is also searching for Jimmy and thinks Barry is the key to finding him. After several confrontations with Holly, Barry's health rapidly declines. Doing a little research himself, Barry finds that Holly works for a pharmaceutical company that does research on Anthrax.
Using Holly Bennett's Facebook page as bait, Val sets a trap for the mole and the mob, leading directly to a bloody confrontation with a sociopathic killer. Unknown to Val, the mob sends some of it soldiers to Ohio searching for Jimmy, using Holly's Facebook page as a guide. The soldiers abduct Barry from a hospital parking lot leading to a final battle on a burning derelict houseboat on frigid Like Eire.
Brian L Gardner is a graduate of Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Science in Technology Management. He’s worked in telecommunications in Kansas, Ohio, and Arkansas since 1997. Mr. Gardner has written short stories and bad poetry for his personal amusement since high school. He counts Tom Clancy, Frank Herbert, and Patrick O’Brian as his favorite authors.
