Secrets of State

Winner, Honorable MentionGenre Fiction2005 Writers Digest AwardsJohn Markham Cortland is the embodiment of Big Oil, a wealthy industrialist secretly smuggling arms and cocaine. Reaping billions in drug profits that dwarf even his oil empire, he compels American intelligence to turn a blind eye until he cultivates new clients in the Middle East.Leighton, an assassin with a checkered past in covert operations, is assigned to kill Cortland in Costa Rica as he vacations with his mistress. But when Leighton's escape plan mysteriously fails, he goes to ground as the agency sends an old flame in harm's way to smoke him out. Paula Grant carries the proof that Leighton's assignment was a rogue operation, but even she does not know if her true mission is to rescue him, or flush him before the guns of the agency's contract killers.Evading a nationwide manhunt, Leighton and Paula come to realize they threaten the forces that engineered Cortland's death, forces that have penetrated their own agency and arranged to sabotage the dead industrialist's promising synthetic fuel .