One man against a ruthless human trafficking cartel and the violent men who make fortunes selling women and girls like livestock. They picked the wrong man.
A drive-by shooting at an animal rights rally in Lexington, Kentucky leaves two people dead––just one more numbing headline for the Nightly News at Six. But things turn personal when Patrick Grainger’s daughter is wounded in the crossfire. Questions without answers lead Grainger on a wild ride through the back roads of North Carolina to a mammoth slaughterhouse and a multinational empire that feeds millions.
The abusive treatment of hogs at Fox Hill Farms may be a public relations nightmare but it’s no secret. Then Grainger stumbles across the story beneath the story. His discovery threatens to expose a ruthless cartel powered by violent men who make fortunes selling women and girls like livestock.
When the son of a Mexican kingpin is found dead the floodgates open to a classic tale of revenge and retribution––family for family. The murder and torture that has become routine in rural Tlaxcala is drawn to the streets of Frankfort, Kentucky and a sobering reality sets in––that no place in everyday America is safe from the evils of unlimited money, power, and greed.
Pulled from national headlines, this clash between one desperate man and a brutal organization of thousands sets the stage for a final climax that will determine who lives and who dies. An adrenaline-choked thrill ride, a tale of unspeakable tragedy and redemption, and the realization that the animals we should fear the most walk on two legs.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
THE NIGHT WAS THICK AS BUTTER with them, swarming the low-country highway, minding their own invertebrate business, captured without warning in the harsh glare of his speeding headlight. With due respect to the victims exploding in a disgusting mosaic of green and yellow against his windshield, Patrick Grainger had more pressing issues. At three in the morning on a Carolina back road he checked his rear-view mirror again.
Still nothing.
So far, so good.
They would assume he’d taken the short sprint east to I-40. Even at this late hour there’d be more traffic, more witnesses, and if he got lucky, maybe a guardian angel Highway Patrol he could fall in behind. With a ten-minute head start that was his best chance to make Raleigh and the safety in numbers there. That’s what they would expect.
That’s why he turned west, away from the Interstate, and hung a right in Claxton on US 421, a rural two-lane snaking north past musky fields of soybeans and lowland cotton. He could reconnect with I-40 in Greensboro after they’d given up the chase. For now he just needed to put some distance between himself and the Farm.
The throbbing ache at the base of his spine was a sharp reminder there was more to their enterprise than livestock––in this case something worth killing for. His unwelcome visit under the cover of darkness had given them reason to suspect he was a threat. The three bodies he left in his wake removed all doubt. A simple fact-finding mission had turned into a high-stakes game, no limit.
As the needle on his speedometer touched seventy he fought through the pain and drifted away to disturbing images from two days earlier––a parking lot teeming with innocents; an automatic rifle appearing out of nowhere; the panic and chaos that followed. Aimee was out of danger now, lying uncomfortably in a hospital bed in Lexington with bullet holes in her arm and shoulder and a tray full of pain meds. A few inches to the left and there would have been no need. His mounting anger at an unknown adversary, one that nearly cost him his daughter after all they had gone through this past year and a half, forced a hard twist on the throttle of his Harley Davidson.
His left hand crossed over to the right side of his belt and felt for the Colt 45-caliber pistol, an unconscious, reassuring touch borne out of habit. This time it prompted a grimace. In the dark a sharp burn dug into his lower back. He pulled back and swallowed the pain. As silhouettes of trees and silos flew past, he digested his discovery during the last hour: ten warehouses stuck in the middle of nowhere, a virtual housing project of hogs raised for slaughter, packed like live sardines in sweltering bins of mass desperation. And the same unforgettable stench he’d detected on the dead man sprawled in the Kroger parking lot Saturday.
A flicker in the rear-view mirror grabbed his attention, two pin-pricks of light a half mile back that weren’t there a minute ago. Someone new was in way too big a hurry. He cranked the throttle again on the handlebar, boosting one more time to eighty but the lights continued to gain ground.
His own headlight spotlighted a flash of deep yellow ahead on the right shoulder. A familiar diamond-shaped sign. With the ache in his back screaming at him he made a decision. He let off the throttle, no brakes, no warning for his uninvited guest a quarter mile back and closing, and leaned into the broad sweep of the curve.
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