Anthony Eddolls

David Stilley thought lunch with an old lacrosse teammate would be a nostalgic break in an otherwise ordinary FBI day. Instead, Roger Hammond walks him into a conspiracy involving illegal weapons, a missing employee, and a Russian sleeper agent hidden in plain sight.

As Stilley and his BAU team follow the trail from Quantico to New York, Seattle, and the Caribbean, the case keeps mutating. Cartel assassins, vanished executives, and a handler inside the Russian network all point to one terrifying truth: Hammond International has become the center of a war no one saw coming.

But the deeper Stilley digs, the uglier it gets. If Hammond is lying, he’s a traitor. If he’s not, then someone is willing to kill to keep the truth buried. And when the FBI starts closing in, the only question left is who will survive long enough to tell what really happened.

One call from DC to Rome.
One dead consular official.
One weapon that's been used before.

This crime fiction book was written as an international conspiracy thriller that evolved into a psychological suspense novel and a political conspiracy book, all wrapped up with CIA conspiracy elements. It's more relevant in today's political environment than I intended; but truth being stranger than fiction undoubtedly applies.

When Special Agent in Charge David Stilley answers a call in Rome, he expects a routine liaison—until he learns a consular official was murdered with the same weapon used to kill an American banker in London. Pulled into a three-nation manhunt from Milan to Dover, Stilley discovers a pattern too clinical to be random: pro hits, identical casings, and a contract that hums with state-level resources. As the roster of victims grows, the hunt points not just at a lone killer but at a global plot with a single, devastating purpose.

Stilley must force confessions from ghosts—an ex-SAS assassin, a retired colonel, and a web of cut-outs—while keeping his marriage and his conscience intact. Every lead tightens the noose, but the bigger the prize, the greater the risk: evidence points to a covert program whose removal would topple an administration—and the very agencies sworn to defend democracy.

With the clock ticking and an arsenal of friends and enemies closing in, Stilley must decide whether justice is a public reckoning or a private bargain. One wrong move and the truth detonates.

Will he pull the pin?