Strong from the Heart
(Caitlin Strong #11)
by
Jon Land
Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Suspense
Publisher: Forge Books
Date of Publication: July 28, 2020
Number of Pages: 368 pages
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Caitlin Strong wages her own personal war on drugs against the true power behind the illicit opioid trade in Strong from the Heart, the blistering and relentless 11th installment in Jon Land’s award-winning series.
The drug crisis hits home for fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong when the son of her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters nearly dies from an opioid overdose. On top of that, she’s dealing with the inexplicable tragedy of a small Texas town where all the residents died in a single night.
When Caitlin realizes that these two pursuits are intrinsically connected, she finds herself following a trail that will take her to the truth behind the crisis that claimed 75,000 lives last year. Just in time, since the same force that has taken over the opiate trade has even more deadly intentions in mind, specifically the murder of tens of millions in pursuit of their even more nefarious goals.
The power base she’s up against―comprised of politicians and Big Pharma, along with corrupt doctors and drug distributors―has successfully beaten back all threats in the past. But they’ve never had to deal with the likes of Caitlin Strong before and have no idea what’s in store when the guns of Texas come calling.
At the root of the conspiracy lies a cabal nestled within the highest corridors of power that’s determined to destroy all threats posed to them. Caitlin and Cort Wesley may have finally met their match, finding themselves isolated and ostracized with nowhere to turn, even as they strive to remain strong from the heart.
Praise
“A time-jumping, savory Tex-Mex tale, seasoned with all the ingredients of a great thriller.”―Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author
“A mind-blowing tale that takes a flamethrower to our psyches to warm the chill it leaves up our spines. Seething with energy and replete with wondrously staged set pieces, this is thriller writing that defies genre even as it reminds us why we love to read.”―NYK Daily
“Exceptional…. Snappy one-liners, plausible dialogue, and lots of nonstop action, Land delivers another riveting, believable thriller.”―Press-Republican
“Caitlin Strong is one of the strongest female characters ever to hit the page, and Jon Land is the king of the intelligent thriller, continually pushing his own writing to new levels.”―New York Journal of Books
Prologue from STRONG FROM THE HEART
BY JON LAND
Southwest Texas
“There is a house down in New Orleans, they call the rising sun.”
As the famed song played in the single bud still wedged inside an ear, Tom Santiago found himself baking beneath a sun that had risen hours ago, long before his postal rounds brought him to the town of Camino Pass. The mailbag was still slung over his shoulder, a trail of circulars, bills, and typical junk mail left in his three-mile wake across the desert. His other ear bud fluttered by his side, Santiago noticing that no more than he noticed the wind having blown his cap off a mile back, exposing his nearly baldpate to the blistering sun.
His scalp was already scorched red, but neither the pain nor the burn registered with him one bit. He walked purposefully, even though no part of his assigned route awaited him and only bobcats, mule deer and coyote were anywhere about to claim the mail he was toting.
“And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and, God, I know I’m one . . .”
Santiago listened to classic rock through the duration of his route, able to time his delivery schedule to how many songs he’d listened to. He could cover an entire neighborhood in the length of one of Bob Dylan’s ballads and a whole street in the time it took to listen to almost any pair of Beatles songs that ranked among his favorites.
Today, though, he didn’t register the song playing in one of his ears or anything else. He walked in an absurdly straight line, as if the desert flora he passed lined his normal route, similarly not noticing the Homeland Security drone overhead. Homeland maintained a fleet of them in the area of the Texas-Mexico border to watch for immigrants making their way north after illegally crossing the border. But the dispatcher who radioed the nearest patrol vehicle currently coming up on Tom Santiago from behind never before had to deal with a wayward mailman instead.
The Humvee with the Homeland Security logo stenciled on both sides came around Santiago and banked to the side to cut him off, only to have him skirt the vehicle and continue on as if it were a natural obstacle. So officers Jim Ochoa and Darnell Reavis leaped down from their air-conditioned cab and caught up with the dazed, barely blinking mailman after a brief chase.
“Hey, buddy, what’s wrong?” Ochoa said, snapping his fingers in front of Santiago’s face and positioned so he could not resume his march through the desert. “You lost or something?”
When this produced no response, Darnell Reavis plucked some mail from the top of Santiago’s bag.
“Isn’t that a crime or something?” Ochoa asked him.
“I don’t think this drunk sack of shit is in shape to care.”
“You think he’s drunk?”
Now it was Reavis who snapped his fingers before the mailman. “Or stoned. What else?”
Ochoa regarded some of the mail Reavis had handed him. “Looks like he left a whole bunch of mail to Camino Pass undelivered.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Small town, no more than three hundred residents,” Ochoa recalled.
“Maybe one of them can tell us what happened to this guy. Hey, what’s that song he’s listening to?” Reavis wondered, easing the stray bud into his ear to find out.
“Well, I got one foot on the platform, the other foot on the train, I’m going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain.”
***
Both Ochoa and Reavis felt something strange as the town of Camino Pass came into view. Though neither would admit it, both were of a mind not to continue and call in the Highway Patrol instead, especially when Tom Santiago’s eyes bulged at sight of the town and he began thrashing against the bonds of his shoulder harness.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”
Santiago finally stopped with his eyes frozen open on Camino Pass growing in shape before them, the perspiration that had soaked through his blue postal uniform now gluing him to the Humvee’s leather-like upholstery.
“What do you want to do?” Reavis asked Ochoa.
“Let’s see what we can see,” his partner replied, even though that wasn’t what he wanted to do at all.
They passed by the homes dotting the town’s outskirts and continued toward its small commercial center populated by stores that had been around since either man had been born, some of them closed.
“Hey,” Reavis said, his attention drawn to the right, “there’s an open door over there. A restaurant, I think.”
“Or a bar,” from Ochoa.
“That would explain things.”
“Want to check it out?”
“I’m thinking one of us should stay with the mailman.”
Ochoa threw open his door. “He’s not going anywhere. Come on.”
***
Tom Santiago’s blank stare followed the men passing through the open door, little more than the length of a breath passing before they stumbled back outside, both nearly falling in their desperate rush back to the vehicle.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the mailman repeated over and over again on an infinite loop, as Ochoa screeched the Humvee around and raced from the town with the accelerator floored the whole way.
Reavis grabbed the mic from its stand. “Central, this is Rover Six! Central, come in!”
“This is Central, Rover Six.”
“Central, we’ve got a potential Level One event in the town of Camino Pass. Send . . .”
“Rover Six, this is Central,” the Homeland Security dispatcher said, when Reavis went quiet after using terminology reserved only for the most serious of catastrophes. “Rover Six, we read you. Please continue.”
Reavis swallowed hard. “Send . . . everyone.”
Start Reading Chapter One on All The Ups and Downs, 11/3/2020 OR LATER
Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty books, eleven of which feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel and the 2020 American Fiction Award for Best Thriller. He has also authored six books in the MURDER, SHE WROTE series and has recently taken over writing Margaret Truman’s CAPITAL CRIMES series. A 1979 graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements.
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