Foundations arrives next week! I can’t believe it is finally here. This book has been living in my head for so long. I’m so excited for you to finally be able to read it.
To pump you up for the launch on December 6th, check out the preview chapter below.
Foundations Preview Chapter
“Are we there yet?”
Morgan Dunleavy wondered how many more times she would hear the incessant whine of Ben Riley’s voice before they reached their destination. He only did it to engage—a conversation starter, he called it. To her, it was nothing more than filling an awkward silence.
He had been that way since his return. For the joy and jubilation that consumed those first moments after learning he had survived his brush with death, concern and worry followed quickly. Every glance in his direction confirmed he was indeed back, that the damage wrought by Sullivan’s coup and Hendricks’ brutal torture was gone. All evidence of the pain Ben endured had been brushed aside and tucked away by a miracle drug.
A drug injected by the Witness, of all people.
That fact scared the living hell out of her. Just knowing the man was involved, after everything he had done in Bellbrook and since, troubled Morgan to no end. Ben tossed her concerns aside. There was nothing left to say on the subject in his eyes. He was back. It was time to move on. She couldn’t. Not by a long shot.
“Morgan, I’m serious,” Ben said over the whipping wind and the choppy waves beneath the scow of the boat. “Are we there yet? All this bouncing around isn’t great for my delicate constitution.”
The jokes he made played into her concern. There was always a dig about his health, something that mattered to her. To Ben, however, it was a way to lighten the mood. More accurately, his joking lightened his own mood—never hers.
“Up ahead,” she finally said, not bothering to look at him.
“This is the place?” Ben shifted to her side. He removed his sunglasses and squinted through the brightness of the day at the oil rig in the distance.
“According to Adler,” Morgan said. Their rental boat skidded across the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. As the massive legs of the rig loomed closer and closer, Morgan slowed the boat to let it settle along the side of the dock installed for incoming travelers. “She hasn’t been able to get far with the intel we managed to get from Sullivan and Stallworth, but this place raised a ton of red flags.”
Three weeks, and they barely had a blip of a lead on the Trust. Sullivan and Stallworth, for all their duplicity, had kept a tight leash on any viable intelligence for the DSA to glean. Most of the conversations recorded amounted to nothing more than gloating over their successes. They never named those involved with the Trust, or their strongholds.
Three weeks of waiting. The delay wasn’t Adler’s fault. She was built for logistics, not decryption. When she stumbled across the intel for this place, Morgan jumped at the chance to head into the field.
She was glad for something to do, and she could tell Ben felt the same. He leaped from the boat to the waiting dock. Morgan tossed him a rope. He secured it around the post at the end of the dock, and Morgan killed the engine of their rental.
Ben helped Morgan from the boat, then pulled his sidearm out. She followed suit, and the pair started for the stairs leading to the top of the rig.
“How the hell could a place like this be buried right in the DSA’s overhead and Metcalf didn’t notice?” Ben said. Morgan wondered the same thing. They all missed too much of late. “I mean, what did the list look like exactly? Paperclips, printer paper, and—oh, yeah—an oil rig? I feel like we’re going to find someone inside wearing an eye patch and stroking a cat.”
Morgan pushed past him as they reached the deck. Her Glock settled against her palm. She rolled her eyes at him. “He had a scar, not an eye patch.”
The landing pad occupied much of the open space on the rig’s surface. The platform led to a lower level, where twin double doors sat ajar. Morgan headed for the shadows. She waved for Ben to follow.
“All I’m saying is watch out for booby traps and sharks with laser beams on their heads,” Ben continued, his voice quieter as they entered the station’s interior.
“Anything to hear yourself say booby.”
Ben laughed. The sound echoed through the darkened corridors.
Morgan held up a finger for quiet. “Grow up, Riley.”
He passed her his flashlight, and she took it to light the way. “That ship has sailed.”
“Along with any chance of an actual conversation, right?”
Ben’s smile faded. “Not this again. I’m fine, Morgan.”
“Sure.” It was the same answer he had given since his return. She had pressed him for an examination, for further study of what the Witness had done to him, yet he remained obstinately against it.
Refusing to rise to the bait, Morgan bit back the mounting questions swirling through her thoughts. She focused on the task instead. They headed deeper into the confines of the rig. The initial entrance appeared to be standard fare for such a setup. Bare walls and pipes ran along the sides. After the first turn, that changed to white walls and signs documenting directions throughout the complex.
The place appeared to be more medical research facility than oil rig. Laboratories of study occupied every corridor. Multiple avenues of study were mentioned on the signage throughout the place. None staggered them more than the name adorning the top of the main double doors to the complex: THE ARK.
“It can’t be,” Ben muttered. Both knew of the place from Metcalf’s debriefing after their time in Chicago during the Promethean affair.
“Come on,” Morgan said. “There must be something left behind.”
She was wrong. Despite the massive complex, filled with multiple labs on different levels throughout the place, nothing remained from the previous tenants. Every room, be it storage or lab, had been picked clean. Computers were taken or destroyed. The pair of DSA agents found not one scrap of evidence to share with their colleagues back home.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though. No, that came from what the previous occupants of the rig did leave behind, and what the pair of DSA agents found as they entered the Cryogenics lab. The occupied tubes were gone, but the names attached to each remained mounted to placards at the base of each station.
One drew Morgan’s attention immediately. “Jake…”
Jacob Grissom had brought her into the DSA. He had saved her life and shown her a way to continue to make a difference. Everything she’d known about the man had turned out to be a lie. He had betrayed the DSA, and her in the process. Still, the sight of his name—his body no doubt kept on ice here for months—saddened her.
She turned to Ben, who was standing before the neighboring station. “Hendricks made a comment about it, but I didn’t believe him.”
“What do you mean?”
He stepped away. The flashlight illuminated the name emblazoned on the placard. “Henry Reed was here. I thought we saved him, but all we did was put him in danger.”
She reached for him, a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him.”
Ben pulled away. He widened his arms to showcase the room. There were dozens of empty stations, and names none of them recognized. “And the rest?” Ben asked. “How the hell did we miss this?”
“By not asking the right questions.”
Ben took her meaning. “I said, I’m fine.”
“I don’t believe you,” she pressed. “How have you been sleeping? Any dizzy spells? Dietary changes? These are things we should be monitoring, Ben. The Witness—”
“Saved my life,” Ben said. “Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me how. He did it. And I really am fine, Morgan. Trust me.”
“I… I do, Ben, but—”
“Good,” he said, not caring to continue the conversation. “Then can we finish up here? This place gives me the creeps.”
“Me too,” Morgan agreed with a nod. She led them back through the labyrinth of halls until they could see daylight. Ben pushed ahead through the last doors, where the wind washed over him like a wave of fresh air. Morgan slowed to watch. Something was different about him. It was more than being saved by the Witness.
When she joined him in the center of the landing pad, his hands were at his hips and he was letting the sunlight wash over him, like he needed to be cleansed from the operation that had been concealed in the abandoned rig.
“We need to make this right,” he said.
“We will,” Morgan replied. He ran his hands over his face. “Hey. Ben, we will. You know that.”
Ben’s dusty brown eyes met hers. A slight nod escaped him. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here anymore.”
She stopped him at the stairs. “I’m not trying to push, Ben, but I’m here if you need to talk.”
“Morgan—”
“This is more than just the Witness thing,” she said. He might not have wanted to talk about it, but he needed to hear her, truly hear her without the usual sarcastic wit that divided them. “I’m here when you’re ready. You know that, right?”
“I…” Ben hesitated, then let out a long breath. Before he could continue, Morgan’s phone chirped in her pocket. Ben offered a wry smirk. “Saved by the call.”
Morgan grimaced. “I’m not done, Ben.” She pulled her phone loose, swiped to accept the call, and placed it on speaker. “What’s up, Adler?”
“Catch you at a bad time?” Alison Adler asked. “I can—”
“We’re fine,” Morgan started. “There’s—”
Ben jumped in, leaning closer to the speaker. “The Ark, if I have to call it that, has been cleared out. These Trust bastards are ten steps ahead of us.”
“For now,” Morgan added.
“Sorry the lead didn’t work out,” Adler said.
“Not your fault, Adler,” Morgan said. “What’s going on?”
“A situation has come up at the Bunker.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Another great name. Should we name the boat on the way back to port?”
Morgan turned off the speaker and shifted the phone to her ear. She pointed down the stairs, then started for the boat. Ben stomped petulantly along the metal grating. It was going to be a fun trip back, for sure.
“What’s going on, Adler? Is everything okay?”
“New mission,” Adler answered. “And you’re not going to believe where it came from.”
