THE WOMAN. Linda Darby is a seven-year divorcee, living quietly in a small let-the-world-go-by beach town on the coast of Oregon, who day trades for a living. Her only close friend is a widowed elderly woman who manages a small consulting company, which, as is later discovered, never has visitors, sends and receives its business correspondence only by courier, and is not listed in any phone directory. No one in town knows what kind of consulting the company does, but the rumor is that whatever they do is done for the government. Linda doesn’t date local men. When her celibacy grows intolerable, she visits nearby towns to frequent the watering holes of successful men. Her motto: No relationships. No second dates. No use of her real name during one-night stands.
Then one evening, Linda goes for a walk and nothing for her is ever the same. She is dragged into an alley by two men, but saved by a third, a stranger who disappears as suddenly as he appeared.
HOMETOWN SECRETS. Memories are funny things. The way they quietly hang around. Linger. Waiting for something we see or hear, or an unexpected event to slam them forward into our consciousness. To strike us the way headlights assault a dark road. Some memories bring along a smile, others foreshadow danger and there are those which cry out for resolution. All of this is true for Linda Darby.
Linda wonders if she might again be lured into her first lover’s bed. As the pace quickens she does find love, along with friendship, fear, danger, and opportunity. Clashes of personality and conflicts between the agendas of the principal characters eventually coalesce in ways Linda never anticipated.
THE FIRST LADIES SECOND MAN. A mother and her daughter in Oregon are threatened. Relentlessly, Linda Darby and Ryan Testler are pulled toward these seemingly disparate events until their only way out is to confront what is quickly becoming unavoidable.
HEART STRIKE. The President of the United States assigns Ryan Testler a cloak-and-dagger mission to Europe in pursuit of support for his new doctrine dealing with the Middle East. Linda Darby accompanies Ryan to create the look of a couple of tourists. That cover story fails. Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., a lone terrorist, after four years as a sleeper, is activated. He wants to complete his sworn duty and make his family in Egypt proud. At the same time, his years in America as a sleeper has given him a different view of the country and its people. He struggles with this conflict as Ryan Testler leads the government's efforts to locate him before its too late.
