Showing results by author "Dustin Stevens" in All Categories

Detective Reed Mattox, just three months removed from the death of his partner, has turned invisibility into an art form. Switching to the K-9, taking over the graveyard shift, moving to a farmhouse miles outside of Columbus - his every move has become predicated on putting as much distance between himself and the outside world as possible. That distance is shattered, though, when bodies begin turning up in The Bottoms, the poverty-stricken section of town he is assigned to patrol.

Bargain Mart, long a fixture in the Missoula economic structure has fallen on hard times. Things are dire, and if a financial windfall doesn't arrive soon, their doors will close. Across town, a woman grieves her recently deceased husband. Sitting alone at her kitchen table trying to put her life back in order, a call arrives asking where his quarter million dollar life insurance policy should be sent. A quarter million dollar life insurance policy she never knew existed. Joined by his partner Ava, and his loyal friends the Zoo Crew, Drake must attempt to make sense of Alice's case.

Two days ago, Eric Winston was about to be a made man. As the head of Mjollnir Industries, he had operated at the forefront of the criminal underworld for over three decades and was finally getting his chance to join the big leagues. An international conglomerate of businessmen and government officials comes together to form one of the largest drug rings in existence. Winston's final task before being officially brought on board? Host a one-night, winner-take-all event featuring the best underground fighters in the world. Everything was in order, until a competitor had to back out

Things are beginning to evolve for the Zoo Crew. Drake Bell has passed the bar exam, accepted a new position, and begun a new phase of his legal career. His first case to walk through the door is in defense of a young woman that was the driver in an accident that left a young cyclist in the hospital. She accepts her guilt, but something about her story strikes a chord with Drake, causing him to dig a little deeper. What starts as an attempt to shield the young woman from the misguided crusade of a prosecutor serving ulterior motives soon begins to shift.

Detective Roese looked up, a strand of lank hair hanging across her face. Blood staining her bare hands and forearms, she kept her weight pitched forward, pressing down on the sucking chest wound, fighting desperately to prevent another tally on the list of recently deceased. “You can’t go out there. Best case, you never find him in the middle of all this. Worst, it’s a trap". Outcomes Reed had already considered and dismissed, his faith placed in the inky black K-9 partner by his side. “Even a ghost leaves a scent".

Six months have passed since the first murder investigation Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner worked together, finding them in the throes of a steamy Midwestern summer, dealing with the usual increase in low-level crime that the hottest months tend to bring, when something unexpected happens. A body is found, and then another, and soon Reed and Billie are on the trail of a potential serial killer whose only pattern for his crimes seems to be no pattern at all. Battling against the heat and the clock, the K-9 team must sort through the crimes to identify a common thread that ties them all together. If they can, they may be able to stop the murders.

Alone on the couch one night, Reed and his partner are both summoned to the hospital to find two of their colleagues have been viciously attacked, left for dead on the side of the road with very little evidence to go on. With emotions high and the entire department vowing revenge, Captain Grimes assigns the case to Reed and Billie, offering them any resources available in finding the culprit. What at first seemed just an isolated incident soon begins to spiral as more bodies are found.

Having no choice but to abandon his adopted life and return to his roots, Scarberry finds himself dropped into a situation far more harrowing than he ever could have imagined. Allied with a single sheriff's deputy - a young woman he knew only briefly in his youth who is fighting battles of her own - the two face a network of illegal gun runners, apathetic bureaucracy, and federal agency, ultimately squaring off with the very thing Scarberry's been trying to avoid for so long....

Felix "O" O'Connor is an ex-con from central Ohio who has spent the last seven years working on a ranch in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. Rarely does he venture out into the world and never does it come looking for him. Both of those things change when his twin sister, Alexa "Lex" Borden, calls from Columbus, Ohio, to ask for his help.

A boy of just six years old, Austin Roberts found himself perpetually in the way at the post-funeral gathering of his great uncle Jack. Frustrated and alone, he wandered out onto the front porch to find his great uncle Cat, Jack's brother, sitting alone, an old album on his lap. Oblivious to the world around them, the two begin an unlikely conversation and together embark on a journey that stretches almost seven decades in length.

Three years ago, Ham retired to a quiet life in the remote desert of Northern Mexico. Realizing what she was doing would likely end in her death, she severed all ties, disappearing across international borders. Her retirement ended abruptly with a single message. The sole person in the world Ham feels the least bit of loyalty to is in trouble, in need not only of Ham but of the very skills that put her into hiding. Acting against every ingrained maxim, and ignoring the myriad warning signs popping up along the way, Ham returns north to find a great deal has changed in her time away.

The Zoo Crew. A random assortment of individuals that came together in western Montana out of circumstance, stayed together by choice. Among them are Ajax, a gaming genius far from his native Boston. Kade, a forest firefighter that spends half his year roaming the blazing countryside, the other half perusing the local nightlife. Sage, registered nurse and proverbial mother hen for the group.

When Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner, Billie, received a direct summons to the personal residence of Governor Thomas Cowan, he assumed it was another escalation over the particulars of their new position as liaisons between the Columbus Police Department and the state Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

Deep in the heart of winter, things are beginning to shift for the Zoo Crew. Drake Bell is wrapping up his last days in law school and preparing to take the bar exam. Kade Keuhl has finally relented and agreed to apply for his private investigator's license. The ski lift at the local Snow Plaza has grounded everybody from hitting the slopes. And Emily, Drake's former college flame, is back in town looking to make him an offer that could alter everything moving forward.

For much of the last year, the liaison position thrust on Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner Billie, forcing them to split time between the Columbus Police Department and the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, saw them doing an increasing amount of work for the latter. Cases handpicked by the governor with the hope of currying goodwill on his own behalf, sending them to nearly every corner of the state.

Eighteen months ago, Detective Reed Mattox didn’t just lose his partner, the woman he met on his first day at the police academy and worked with for the entirety of his career thereafter. He lost his confidante. His sounding board. His support system. His best friend. Victim to a senseless shooting during a routine traffic stop, the details of that night are still as elusive to Reed as they were more than a year before.

Two weeks ago, Lukas Webb was an Army sniper on the front lines in Afghanistan. Upon finding out his father has just days to live, he is granted a compassionate discharge and returns home to Hamilton, Montana to say goodbye and take over the family business. Just days into his tenure at the helm of the WB Ranch, he appears at the front door of an Agriculture Commission meeting carrying a rifle and fires two perfect shots before being taking three rounds himself. While Lukas sits in Hamilton Memorial Hospital in a medical-induced coma, a frenzy wages on outside.

Roughly a month after going head-to-head with the copycat killer who had singled Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner Billie out in an attempt to capitalize on their recent success, the duo is still reeling. Faced with uncertainty over where they are and what they are doing for the first time since partnering together years before, they retreat home to Oklahoma for the holidays to regroup.

For the past two months, Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner Billie were in limbo. Victims of their own success, they were plucked from their posts on the graveyard shift at the Eighth Precinct and thrust into a newly created role working with the governor’s office when a young woman is shot down outside her front door. Immediately written off by some in the small town as nothing more than a tragic hunting accident; closer examination proves it to not just be a murder, but an execution.

It started as a quiet night, a much needed reprieve for the overworked team of Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner, Billie. With just a single phone call from dispatch, both are plunged into a nightmare they could have never imagined. Somewhere in the greater Columbus area, a young 20-something is sealed away inside a coffin. With no recollection of how she got there or who might have put her there, she is desperate.