A deputy and a wounded witness collide with a sprawling criminal network. The rescue was supposed to be the easy part.
When armed assailants storm a Nuevas Montañas hospital to finish what they started, Deputy Rick Hunter is shot protecting the woman in the bed beside him â and finds himself at the center of an investigation far larger than a single act of violence.
She survived because they made mistakes. So they tried something else: they made her disappear. Her name erased, her records rewritten, her life reduced to a digital silence designed to leave no trace. Now Hunter has to keep her alive long enough to understand what, and who, she's evidence of.
What follows is a widening investigation into human trafficking, coordinated cyber frames, and an organization that doesn't just kill its victims. It deletes them. No records. No witnesses. No survivors.
The deeper they go, the more they uncover a system built not to be exposed but to outlast the people trying to expose it. The top man has no name in the files. Every official statement about the case being "dismantled" is a careful lie.
For readers of Don Winslow, John Sandford, and Michael Connelly.
A deputy and a wounded witness collide with a sprawling criminal network. The rescue was supposed to be the easy part.
When armed assailants storm a Nuevas Montañas hospital to finish what they started, Deputy Rick Hunter is shot protecting the woman in the bed beside him â and finds himself at the center of an investigation far larger than a single act of violence.
She survived because they made mistakes. So they tried something else: they made her disappear. Her name erased, her records rewritten, her life reduced to a digital silence designed to leave no trace. Now Hunter has to keep her alive long enough to understand what, and who, she's evidence of.
What follows is a widening investigation into human trafficking, coordinated cyber frames, and an organization that doesn't just kill its victims. It deletes them. No records. No witnesses. No survivors.
The deeper they go, the more they uncover a system built not to be exposed but to outlast the people trying to expose it. The top man has no name in the files. Every official statement about the case being "dismantled" is a careful lie.
For readers of Don Winslow, John Sandford, and Michael Connelly.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
9:00 P.M.
Deputy sheriff Rick Hunter cruised west along Highway 7, cutting through the communications dead zone east of Nuevas Montañas. Scrub desert hugged the road, but the hills ahead thickened into tree lines. The border was a few miles south. The night was clear. Empty.
Radar steady. Dash cam recording.
No movement anywhere.
Thenâ
A figure burst into his headlights.
A woman.
She broke from the trees just beyond the shoulder.
Barefoot. No phone. No purse.
Hunter slammed on the brakes, the Charger sluicing hard onto the shoulder with a shotgun blast of gravel.
Gunfire exploded the silence as he opened the door.
A shattering crack, hard-edged and close. Before he could even register the aim, a bullet smacked through his window, beads raining down over the upholstery, the dash, and his own shoulder.
Instinct coiled. He hit the deck, diving beside the front tire, one palm crushed to the burning grit of the shoulder, gravel biting through skin. The metal, the rubber, the engine blockâthe only line between him and the hammering rounds tearing into his cruiser. An eye blink of safety.
No obvious target.
Three more flashes snapped from the tree line.
Glass peppered the hood; bullets dented the passenger door in harsh impacts. Everything snapped into focus: The woman sprawled in the dust, her gold blouse blooming red, a shock of blood splattered like paint. Primal adrenaline, cold and clean, took over.
Five seconds, maybe less.
Head down, Hunter sprinted forward, grabbed her under the arms, and half dragged, half carried her ten feet back toward the Charger. She was dead weight, limp; the blood soaking into his uniform was thick, and not his own. He reeled her to the back door, fighting the sag of her body.
Crack. Another shot screamed past.
He shoved her in, slammed the door, and hit the gas. The Charger fishtailed, its Hemi engine snarling, its tires clawing for purchase, and then they were away, blacktop and yellow lines widening the distance.
A final round knocked the trunk, rattling his teeth and spine clear up to the roots of his hair.
Wind barreled in, glass shards slashing through the cab, the whole car a moving hurricane of debris and sirens. Chest pounding, he did a systems check: no new pain, no bullet holes in his flesh, the only wet heat soaking his shirt coming from her.
He kept going, his eyes hunting for motion in the dark, his breath ragged. This wasnât random. It was targeted. Sheâd been hunted with the kind of persistence you saw only on the border. If she got away, someone didnât want her to talk.
At mile marker 12, where the dead zone ended, he banked onto the shoulder atop a rise, lit up the dome, and checked the rear. The woman was still crumpled on the seat, her gold blouse stabbed through with crimson, her braid plastered hard to her neck, her skin so white it almost glowed. Scrapes and cuts scored her limbs. No ID. No bag. Nothing that said who she was. Just a blue-turquoise anklet, engraved with a bloodhound, glinting in the lightâs glow.
He reached over; her pulse was thin and fluttering.
No time for indecision. He popped the trunk, yanked out the first aid kit, and in seconds was back, his gloves snapping, his hands already moving. Hunter peeled the fabric and pressed gauze to the gushing exit wound above her rib, using plastic and tape to seal the worst of it. He rolled her over, found the entry wound, and patched it too. Then he rolled her onto her left side, her arms tucked in, just to buy time and air.
In the front again. Dome light off, siren and emergency lights surged to life. He snatched the mic from its cradle and howled into it, fighting wind, noise, chaos, and the raw edge of panic.
âBase, this is Hunter!â
Dispatch snapped back, all business, but the static felt alive. âHunter, this is Base. Go ahead.â
He didnât waste syllables. âIâm westbound on Highway 7, mile marker 12. I have a female, gunshot wound upper torso, unresponsive, heavy bleeding. Advise Valley Regional Medical: ETA five to seven out. I took fire while getting her. My vehicleâs been hit.â
âCopy. Suspect description?â
âNegative. Shots from the north side near mile marker 15. No vehicle. No visual on suspects. Couldnât call it in.â
Sheriff Axtellâs voice cut in, hard as diamond: âHunter, Iâll meet you at Valley Regional.â
Dispatch pounced on the open air: âSanchez and Wilson, this is Base. Proceed immediately to mile marker 15 on Highway 7. Secure the area. State Patrol as backup.â
âBase, this is Sanchez, en route.â
âBase, this is Wilson. Roger.â Sirens bled through the speakers, a rising wolf-pack howl echoing his own.
Traffic thickened as Hunter tore into town.
He caught Sanchez and Wilson as a red-and-blue comet, flashing, shooting past him eastbound up the hill, sirens in counterpoint to his own, gone in an eye blink. The only proof was the lingering howl in his ears.
Less than two miles from the hospital.
And there it was: The Channel 9 News van, neon paint job glowing under the moon. Of course. Theyâd had a scanner glued to their dashboard, always first to the scene, hoping death sold airtime.
Hunter bombed past, killed the siren, and skidded up on Valley Regionalâs ambulance bay, fishtailing behind Axtellâs waiting pickup. A waterfall of red and blue soaked the glass doors, doctors and nurses already amassed in a phalanx by the lit entry, ready for triage.
Glass gritted underfoot as he kicked open his door. The trauma team rushed forward.
âYou okay, Deputy?â asked a nurse, her eye flicking from his blood-soaked shirt to his badge.
âIâm fine.â
She didnât take his word for it. Fingers moved down his ribs, patted him down fast, checking for holes.
Satisfied, she darted back to the trauma team as they hauled the victim from the Charger, then vanished through the double doors marked for staff only, a ballet of hands, commands, and urgent movement.
Axtell materialized at his elbow. âDid she say anything?â
âNo, sir. Out cold when I got to her.â
A nod, jaw rigid. The Channel 9 van hit the curb, its doors already cracking open.
âAny ID?â
âNo, sir.â
Axtell jerked a thumb. âGet inside. Iâll handle the news hounds.â
âYes, sir.â Hunter ducked into the glare and motion of the ER, leaving the scorched hush of desert night and the afterimages of gunfire. His steps echoed with unanswered questions, the kind that, in this line of work, never really left you alone.
The debut crime thriller from author J. Dale Dillard, No Safe Habor is a book of high stakes action, which takes readers on plenty of twists and turns as the plot develops. It is also book one of the Nuevas Montañas Files series, suggesting many more novels to follow suit in this gripping genre of adult fiction. The book comes in at around 300 pages long, is set within a fictional region of America, named the Nuevas Montañas ("new mountains") and features a striking cover design by graphic Danna Mathias Steele.
The story follows the main character, Deputy Sheriff Rick Hunter who, while driving late one night encounters a lone woman stumbling through the woods, heavily injured. Racing to the nearest hospital, Rick soon realises that this one action will change the course of his life forever. As things develop it becomes quickly apparent that this strange woman holds secrets of her own and, drawn into a complex web of crime, involving human trafficking and cyber warfare, this small-town Deputy is about to get more than he bargained for when he decided to cruise down Highway seven one September night.
The premise of this book is likeable enough, packed full of pacy action from the off. The story is driven a lot by the frequent time stamps dotted throughout the chapters and, while this works for large time jumps (e.g. months and years), when the time stamps are used at very short intervals (sometimes as brief as five minutes apart) then in No Safe Habor they become a plot crutch, rather than plot amplifier. A lot of the story takes place over a very short time period, but more could have been done with the scene-setting and character interactions to better display this.
Equally, the use of action and drama are great to see, however what this story lacks a little bit is the further development of characters beyond their interactions with others. Readers are thrown into action from the off, and get no time to really understand Rick as an individual. What is his motivation, likes/dislikes, his drivers in life? It is the same for place setting, where readers are often denied a fully-fleshed out description of locations where action takes place. No Safe Habor could have been so much more if it had more time dedicated to world and character building.
The best advice I would impact to this author (and any other author of this genre) would be to step back, take a pause, and give characters the space to breathe and showcase themselves. After all, characters are so much more than the weapons they carry (even the evil ones).
AEB Reviews