Where do they come from?
Mute Swan, Book I of the Cassius Stevenson Series*, begins in Saint Catherines Emergency Department. Dr. Stevenson longs for escape from a job that's making daily life miserable. Dreams and flashbacks of his life in the military are returning at inopportune times and the consequences can be violent. The patients never stop coming. His thoughts never calm. And the ringing, always the ringing.
Your hands, Bulldog. On fire.
Relief comes one day unexpectedly but is short-lived and something deep within Stevenson is riled from hibernation. It wakes, rises, and Control is lost...
Mute Swan tells the tale of a lost warrior, as seen through the eyes of various players. Detective Fredrico Viterello, a homicide detective who's done with the bullshit; Jaris Knott, a professional thug and partner to RJ Reeves, beloved son of City Councilman Lewis Reeves. Each on their own path, time will weave them together, and Baltimore will never be the same.
They wouldn't send just one, Bulldog. A SWAT team for what you done. Not just one.
It's the day after the dog fight massacre and homicide detectives' Watkins and Viterello are called to Stillman Point for the most complicated crime scene of their careers. On the other side of the city, Dr. Cassius Stevenson is home, with a mutilated bait dog, and Jaris Knott lives.
Mission failure.
The city drug market has suddenly changed. A major player died during the melee, leaving an army without a general. The Independents, small drug-dealing crews with only one corner, are appearing everywhere, and shootings and murders are on the rise. Councilman Lewis Reeves seizes on the opportunity to recruit the Independents and, with the help of his son and the commander of the Western precinct, forms an organized empire that the city has not seen the likes of in decades. The operation quietly begins, and the money starts flowing.
Watkins and Viterello are getting nowhere with the Dr. Coleman murder and Stillman Point massacre. Watkins pulls in a Junior detective, Penderson, from his squad for help. The leads soon follow. Timelines are constructed, a person of interest is followed, and, eventually, an unlikely suspect arises from the evidence.
The problems are multiplying for Stevenson, but he can't walk away. The physician and soldier battle within him over the moral code, but something deeper, darker, lurks. Waiting.
This boy here says what you do you become, Bulldog.
*A portion of the proceeds from the Cassius Stevenson Series is contributed to K9s for Warriors, a non-profit organization that places service dogs with veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI. For more information, please see www.k9sforwarriors.org.
And Hell followed with him.
Gabriel is dead. Zooey is missing. The war Stevenson tried to end peacefully with the Reeves Crew continues.
And now city detectives know his connection to it all. Viterello, Watkins, and Penderson get closer everyday to apprehending Stevenson. Viterello learns that he has known the doctor much longer than he thought. Memories return of the day he met young Stevenson, and the shame for never checking on the boy through the years weighs on him like a lead vest.
The Reeves Crew is collapsing. Knott is running the operation and RJ is enjoying the profits of everyone else's work. Crew members are leaving, and Knott and Adrian are considering it too, but Knott is too deep in the game to leave. Rival crews are starting to wreak havoc on their territory, and Knott still hasn't found the doctor who cut him up in the worst of places.
Stevenson sets out to rescue Zooey and the process wakes the helminth within. The Unworthies must pay for what they've done—starting with Councilman Lewis Reeves. But acquiring Reeves results in more than Stevenson ever wanted to know about the death of his family, a betrayal so vile that it breaks him. The city stole his childhood, and it will pay dearly for it. The ghost of Collins tries to warn him of the consequences but the physician is gone, and the soldier has replaced him.
Complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.
But who is the target? Or what?
Too much, Bulldog. Too much gear for one soldier to carry.