According to her, Reynolds told her he was investigating “something big” in Drake that was going to happen very soon and had national security implications. Puller returns to Washington DC to interview Reynolds’s superior officer, General Julie Carson.

The next day, Puller and Cole go to Strauss’s office, where they learn that Molly Bitner recently gave her housemate Eric Treadwell access to Strauss’s inner office and the safe where he keeps sensitive documents. There, he and Cole find two traps that would have killed them if Puller hadn’t had so much experience with improvised explosive devices in the Middle East. Puller returns to his motel and finds a note under his door telling him to meet the sender at a house outside of town. It turns out that Trent’s wife, Jean, is Sergeant Cole’s older sister. Cole and Puller also visit Roger Trent, the owner of Trent Exploration, who appears to know nothing about the murders. Strauss tells them that Molly Bitner worked at his office. Later that day, Puller and Cole are approached by Bill Strauss, the chief operating officer of Trent Exploration, the mine that did the blasting. They were killed using a method common in the Army Special Forces. Surveying the neighborhood, Puller and Cole find the occupants of the house across the street, Molly Bitner and Eric Treadwell, dead and posed like the Reynoldses.

Cole suggests that the reason the neighbors did not notice the shots is that the nearby mine was blasting that night and the killers somehow knew exactly when the blasts would happen. He concludes that the family was interrogated before being killed. Puller and Cole re-secure the scene, and Puller finds the marks of a camera tripod in front of the sofa where the Reynolds family has been posed. Passing a window, he sees someone fleeing into the woods. Plainly, the killers came back to the scene for some reason. He finds the bodies of the Reynolds family and the body of the murdered officer who was supposed to be on duty. He telephones Cole again and goes in to secure the scene. There, he finds that the scene has been left unguarded. Cole agrees to meet him in the morning, and Puller goes to the crime scene on his own. Finding his hotel in the town proper at three o’clock in the morning, he telephones the local officer in charge, Sergeant Samantha Cole. Robert is a brilliant nuclear scientist, and Puller has never fully believed his brother’s guilt.Īpproaching the town of Drake, Puller passes an enormous concrete dome and an abandoned housing complex. Before leaving for West Virginia, Puller visits his brother Robert, who is serving a life sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks for treason. Warrant officer John Puller of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is assigned to investigate the deaths. The page numbers in this guide are from the Kindle edition.Ĭolonel Matthew Reynolds and his family have been murdered in Drake, West Virginia.

Baldacci puller series