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Strong from the Heart--A Caitlin Strong Novel

Page 37

by Jon Land


  Like opioids.

  Yup, that was where Strong from the Heart started, with this magical question: What if Caitlin Strong took on the opioid crisis? What if that crisis hit painfully close to home? What if Caitlin herself realized she might have a problem, too?

  Then I was off and running. But, as all of you know, that’s never enough for me. So I had this vision of a prologue centering around a small town wiped out in a matter of minutes or even less, a kind of homage to the classic opening of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, something that’s stayed with me since I first saw the film when I was maybe twelve years old. The problem was I had no idea what killed the town of Camino Pass and how it connected to the opioid crisis that would define the book’s central focus.

  Now we come to the fortune. Turned out that hydrogen cyanide was the ideal toxin to get the job done. Turned out cyanide was used heavily in the process of extracting gold from ore. Turned out there were gold mines at one time stitched along the border with Texas and Mexico. See what I’m getting at here? Anyway, I had my book.

  Next came the historical thread involving Caitlin’s great-grandfather, William Ray Strong, who’d already kept company, in past books, with the likes of Judge Roy Bean. I’d started writing the scene where he rides into Camino Pass, the very same town that gets wiped out in the present, to pick up a prisoner, only to learn that the town’s children have all been kidnapped, before I realized that prisoner was none other than a young Pancho Villa. Somewhat historically accurate as far as Villa’s background was concerned, but mostly I thought it would be a blast to team the two of them together. And the trail they end up following leads straight to another historically accurate fact: that Chinese immigrants to Mexico brought poppy seeds with them, giving birth to the very drug trade roiling the United States today.

  How about that?

  The thing I enjoy most about writing the Caitlin Strong books is probably the very same thing you enjoy most about reading them: watching the pieces of the story slowly come together. Kind of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. And if I don’t know how those pieces are going to fit when I start the book, it makes it that much harder for you to figure out the various twists and turns that spring up along the way. Call it the fun of writing spontaneously and not working off an outline. The best stuff I came up with in Strong from the Heart, and all the other books in the series, is the stuff I wasn’t aware of when I first put fingers to keyboard.

  That’s what makes the Caitlin Strong books such a blast to write. And the more fun I have writing them, the more fun you’re going to have reading them. So it should come as no surprise that I have no idea what the story I’ll have for you at this time next year is going to be. I just know I’m going to love writing it, which means you’re going to love reading it. That’s a promise.

  So be well until next we meet, and feel free to reach out to me at www.jonlandbooks.com. I enjoy nothing more than hearing from my readers—well, except for writing the books in the first place!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but let’s start at the top with CEO Tom Doherty and Forge’s publisher Linda Quinton, dear friends who publish books “the way they should be published,” to quote my late agent, the legendary Toni Mendez. The great Bob Gleason and Natalia Aponte are there for me at every turn. Editing may be a lost art, but not here thanks to both Natalia and Bob, and I think you’ll enjoy all of my books, including this one, much more as a result.

  My friend Mike Blakely, a great writer and musician, taught me Texas firsthand and helped me think like a native of that great state. And Larry Thompson, a terrific writer in his own right, has joined the team as well to make sure I do justice to his home state along now with his son-in-law, a Texas Ranger himself. And special acknowledgments to Bill Miller who helped me smooth out the geography of the Lone Star State. Thanks, again also to Terry Ayers for making my scientific jargon sound at least somewhat credible.

  A final thanks to Dan Addario, on whom I based the Doyle Lodge character you just met. For more of Dan’s incredible story as a legendary DEA agent who’s been fighting the war on drugs as long as there’s been one, check out the book Chasing the Dragon, which I wrote with him. Like Doyle Lodge, Dan lost his own son to the scourge of opioids. And the fight he continues to wage is aimed at ensuring not another parent need experience such a tragedy.

  Check back at www.jonlandbooks.com for updates or to drop me a line, and please follow me on Twitter @jondland. Thanks to all of you who’ve already written, tweeted, or emailed me your thoughts on any or all of the first ten books in the Caitlin Strong series. You are truly the wind beneath this particular author’s wings and I genuinely hope you enjoyed this Caitlin Strong adventure as much as the others.

  OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND

  The Alpha Deception

  *Betrayal (nonfiction)

  *Black Scorpion: The Tyrant Reborn

  *Blood Diamonds

  *The Blue Widows

  The Council of Ten

  *Dark Light: Dawn

  *Day of the Delphi

  *Dead Simple

  *Dolphin Key

  The Doomsday Spiral

  The Eighth Trumpet

  *The Fires of Midnight

  The Gamma Option

  *Hope Mountain

  *Keepers of the Gate

  *Kingdom of the Seven

  Labyrinth

  *The Last Prophecy

  The Lucifer Directive

  The Ninth Dominion

  The Omega Command

  The Omicron Legion

  Pandora’s Temple

  *The Pillars of Solomon

  The Rising

  *The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending

  *Strong as Steel

  *Strong at the Break

  *Strong Cold Dead

  *Strong Darkness

  *Strong Enough to Die

  *Strong Justice

  *Strong Light of Day

  *Strong Rain Falling

  *Strong to the Bone

  *Strong Vengeance

  *Takedown (nonfiction)

  The Tenth Circle

  The Valhalla Testament

  The Vengeance of the Tau

  Vortex

  *A Walk in the Darkness

  *The Walls of Jericho

  *Published by Forge Books

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of fifty-two books, including eleven featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen major book awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel. He also received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements. A graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at jonlandbooks.com or on Twitter as @jondland. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One. John Coffee Hays

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two. Samuel H. Walker

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18
>
  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Three. Ben Mcculloch

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part Four. William “Bigfoot” Wallace

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Part Five. John B. Armstrong

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Part Six. John B. Jones

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Part Seven. Captain Bill Mcdonald

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Part Eight. Frank Hamer

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Part Nine. Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Part Ten. Joaquin Jackson

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Jon Land

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  STRONG FROM THE HEART

  Copyright © 2020 by Jon Land

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs by Shutterstock.com (background) and Trevillion Images (woman)

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8470-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8471-3 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765384713

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: 2020

 

 

 


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