Publisher's Synopsis
For twelve of his nineteen years with the FBI, Special Agent Jack Sturdevant has acted as liaison to the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice. Having dedicated his life to law enforcement, what he witnesses happening internally at the Department since 9/11 has left him openly cynical and with a growing sense of disillusionment. Offended by the White House's overt political influence, and against every instinct, he leaks information to a New York Times reporter that, ultimately, results in the resignation of the Attorney General of the United States. So it comes as no surprise that the price he pays for his heroic (or mutinous?) act of insubordination is his career. But six months removed from his time at the Bureau, Jack Sturdevant refuses to relinquish what's become his crusade. As an expert on the world of human trafficking - the buying and selling of innocent men, women and children into forced labor - he struggles to make public awareness his life's work. He teaches part-time at a local junior college. He solicits cable news' shows, NPR and other radio outlets. He blogs about his experiences. He accepts any request for a speaking engagement, regardless of travel. And he's been published in the Op-Ed sections of newspapers across the country. One might think he believes he's making a difference One would be wrong. For Jack Sturdevant is driven by the omnipresence of an uncompromising and relentless evil. Technology has permanently altered the playing field. But being outside the legal system relegates him to watching from the stands, denying him the ability to get back on the sidelines let alone in the game. Purveyors and predators alike have learned how the World Wide Web allows them to profit from their helpless victims' misery in ways as diverse as coordinating shipments of their human cargo to continuously streaming live sex shows. And the anonymity of cyberspace only serves to create a world of shadows within which they operate with virtual impunity. But as he wakes to yet another hot and humid summer day in a suburb outside of Chicago, the unending battle to rid the world of these flesh peddlers takes on a deeper, much more personal dimension. As he listens to the familiar voice on the other end of the phone, he feels his heart collapse under the weight of the news: the woman he still loves has been murdered while working deep undercover. And despite being unprepared for the feelings that surface in the wake of a love now forever lost, he resolves at that moment that nothing will stand between him and her killers. For the first time, the savage reality of human trafficking has touched him - and one he loves - in the most cruel and brutal way. And for those responsible, hell cannot burn hot enough. For Jack Sturdevant is not interested in settling for justice or even revenge. It is nothing less than a reckoning he seeks. And he won't be taking prisoners. But his journey back into the barbaric and dehumanizing world of modern-day human slavery will bring him face-to-face with the haunting truth hidden from his own search for absolution about one child he could not save. And while there is no line he will not cross, the cost of his redemption comes at a price even he could not have seen coming. But he first must find a way back in. Any way he can. Because it is for the terrified and defenseless victims whose innocence isn't so much lost as stolen that Jack Sturdevant will bring to those who profit from their suffering a whole new meaning to the phrase "war on terror."
