ISBN: 978-1-936558-06-3 * eISBN: 978-1-936558-07-0 * Paperback $16.95 * E-book $2.99 * Publication: March 15, 2011
“A fast paced, all too real thriller with a villain right out of James Patterson and Criminal Minds.”
– Andrew Gross, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reckless and Don’t Look Twice
“Silence of the Lambs meets The Bourne Identity”
– Brian S. Wheeler, author of Mr. Hancock’s Signature
“An intense novel that will have you locking your windows and doors, installing a safe room and taking Ambien so you can sleep through the night after finishing. ”
– Jeremy Robinson, author of Pulse and Instinct
“A superbly crafted thriller skillfully delving into the twisted mind of a psychopath and the tormented soul of the man destined to bring him down.”
– D.B. Henson, bestselling author of Deed to Death
“A taut, violent and relentless nightmare.”
– A.J. Hartley, bestselling author of What Time Devours and Act of Will.
Read what others are saying here.
Marcus Williams and Francis Ackerman Jr. both have a talent for hurting people. Marcus, a former New York City homicide detective, uses his abilities to protect others, while Ackerman uses his gifts to inflict pain and suffering. When both men become unwilling pawns in a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of our government, Marcus finds himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse trapped between a twisted psychopath and a vigilante with seemingly unlimited resources. Aided by a rogue FBI agent and the vigilante’s beautiful daughter – a woman with whom he’s quickly falling in love – Marcus must expose the deadly political conspiracy and confront his past while hunting down one of the most cunning and ruthless killers in the world.
My novel, The Shepherd, is the first book in a series of thrillers that I believe would be greatly enjoyed by fans of authors such as James Patterson, Dean Koontz, David Morrell, Thomas Harris, Lee Child, and Jeffery Deaver. This introductory book of the series is a stand-alone novel, but provides the reader with an opening into the world of The Shepherd Organization.
The Shepherd is centered upon four characters: Marcus Williams, Francis Ackerman Jr, the Sheriff, and the Sheriff’s daughter, Maggie.
Marcus Williams is a former homicide detective who is running from the dark deeds of his past but finding that no matter where he goes, he can’t run from what’s inside himself. Marcus has recently inherited a ranch outside of a sleepy, little town in Southern Texas where he is soon caught up in a vast conspiracy and trapped in the fight of his life against a group of vigilantes and one of the most prolific serial killers in US history.
The dream always started the same. With the darkness, came memories and pain. Every night, Marcus Williams found himself trapped in a prison without walls. His recollections painted a dark portrait that didn’t simply reside somewhere deep within his subconscious. He had seen it with his own eyes. The world of his memories and the setting of his nightmares had left a stain on his soul and blood on his hands – neither of which could ever truly be washed away.
Like countless others before him, he had begun his career as a young police officer with a head filled by ideals like justice will prevail and good always triumphs over evil. It didn’t take him long to discover that the old cliché of justice being blind was fairly accurate, and more often than not, evil was better funded than good. He had sat on the outside, looking in on a world fueled more by money and power than by the long-forgotten concepts of honor and virtue.
During his time as a protector of the peace, he witnessed many atrocities. He beheld injustices that consisted not only of the acts that men committed, but also of the punishment, or lack thereof, that they received. He had seen good people, who had committed crimes out of desperation and necessity, sentenced to the harshest degree of the law. By the same token, he witnessed justice turn a blind eye to certain individuals because of the size of their bank account or the amount of power that they wielded.
His time as a caretaker of chaos had left him not only haunted by painful memories, but also plagued by soul-shaking visions that tormented him upon entering the deepest recesses of sleep.
His heart raced as the events of a fateful night from his past played out deep inside his mind. He knew that he was dreaming and that nothing could erase the events recorded forever upon the pages of his memory. The fact that it wasn’t real didn’t make the experience seem any less authentic. He could feel the same chill in the air. He could smell the same scent of the river nearby. And he could hear the same scream that called to him on that night; a scream that his dreams would never allow him to forget.
Through the endurance of countless nights of restless sleep, he had learned that if he focused hard enough and screamed with enough ferocity inside his mind, the echoes from his subconscious triggered a reaction in the conscious side of his brain. Through the act of silently screaming, he could break the chains of sleep and save himself from reliving the painful events of his past.
He awoke alone, drenched in sweat from forehead to rib cage. The clock read 5:15.
Francis Ackerman Jr. is a man fluent in the language of pain. After his recent escape from a mental institution, Ackerman takes his own pain out on his unsuspecting victims as he searches for meaning in a world that has shown him only darkness.
“Hello, Father Joseph speaking.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“What have you done, Francis?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I dreamt of the dark man again last night. I –”
“Please, turn yourself in. This has to end.”
He was silent for a moment, but then said, “As I said, before you rudely interrupted, the dark man visited me again last night. I’m sure you think of Lucifer when I describe him—a man of seeming beauty but with a face that the shadows seem to follow. A man who walks amongst the light, although the light never seems to touch him. There was a time when I might have agreed with you. I thought it was Satan himself, but then I wondered if maybe the dark man was my father. Now I’m beginning to feel that the dark man is what I’m becoming. I think he’s me.”
“What have you done, Francis?”
He spun the chamber of the revolver that he had commandeered from Alice. “I’ve taken a family. We’re gonna play.”
“No, please. Lord, grant me strength. Why?”
He could hear in the priest’s voice that the man was crying. Oddly, it gave him no satisfaction.
“Why do you have to kill? And don’t feed me any of the fairy tales that you tell your victims. I want to know why. I want to understand.”
He hesitated a moment and then gazed at his own reflection in the mirror above Alice’s dresser. He realized that tears had formed in his eyes as well.
“Because it’s the only time I really feel alive. The only time I don’t feel hollow…and I can forget the pain. To know that I hold someone’s existence in my hands… It’s euphoric. It’s transcendent. The greatest feeling you can imagine. I can’t stop.”
Maggie is the daughter of the local Sheriff, and after Marcus saves her from a group of drunken cowboys on the first night they meet, a quick bond and mutual attraction is formed. But Maggie has her own share of secrets…
“I told you that you were an odd man.”
“I didn’t dispute it. What about you? You have any oddities?”
She straightened her silverware and folded her napkin into a perfectly symmetrical square. “No, I’m completely normal.”
He grinned. “Nobody’s completely normal.”
“I am.”
“Really. You’re not mildly obsessive compulsive?”
She started to open her mouth but stopped. After a moment, she said, “What makes you say that?”
“I pay attention. Your apartment is impeccably clean – not a single picture or decoration is out of place. Every grouping is perfectly balanced. When you eat, you cut every bite into the same size. You make sure that the silverware you’re not using is in perfect alignment. You folded your napkin into a square. And when you put the sweetener into your tea, you made sure that the markings on the two packets lined up before you opened them. You even put one back because it was longer than the other packet.”
She felt naked before him. She started to say something, decided against it, and stared down at the table.
He reached across and laid a hand over hers. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting the world to be in order and make sense.”
“But my compulsions don’t make any sense. They’re irrational. I don’t have a good reason for doing them. I just feel like that’s the way things should be done. Most people don’t notice, so I try to hide it. It makes me feel like a freak.”
“Does it make sense to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do all the things that you do make sense to you? We each see the world through different eyes. We all have our nuances…our little tics. I’ll give you an example. I always sit facing any points of ingress. I always know what’s behind me. When I walk into a room, the first thing I do is scan it to find the entrances and exits. I consider what could be used as a weapon in this space. I play out in my mind what I would do if someone walked in the door with a gun. Where’s the best place to take cover? What’s the best route to flank an armed assailant who just entered? And other things. Who in the room could pose a threat? Who’s potentially armed? What’s here that’s out of place? What’s missing? All that runs through my head every time I enter a room. Some people call that cop instincts or training. I call it paranoia.”
Marcus squeezed her hand, and she met his gaze. “I don’t have a good reason to do all that,” he said.
“Nobody’s after me. I don’t have any enemies. Even back in New York, I was never in a restaurant that somebody shot up. Maybe one day it’ll save my life, but probably not. Odds are that I’ll never be in that situation. But I can’t help but run through it. It’s just my nature.”
Her face brightened. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being stranger than me.”
