Araseli's Web

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous that ignorance.” –George Bernard Shaw

The skeletal figure who followed Virginia Roosevelt-Woodburn into the café that day was far more than a forgotten omen from her past, but a carrier of the virus she and her team had birthed more than a decade earlier. And he was threatening to release it.

But it didn’t have to end that way. The omen was willing to make a trade. Deliver the man who had been her organization’s top operative at the time—along with that man’s son—and he would put the virus back in the vial. And what was the virus he carried?

Knowledge.

Knowledge of a treachery dealt to the Soviet Union by the United States so terrible that if released would plunge the world into a global conflict. Could Ginny make the decision to trade two lives in exchange for millions? Even if those lives were like family?

After extracting Araseli Estrada (the accountant for the brutal Cartel Del Golfo) from Mexico, Professor Liam Curran had been ordered by his NGO employer—the BICA Group—to stand down and recover. Curran, like a good former Navy SEAL, did as he was told. But not to the exact letter of the order…

Driven by his obsession to squelch the tormenting nightmares of a dead Kurdish child, and deliver vengeance to those he believes caused her death, Liam once again sets out to find the last remaining members of the now-defunct cabal known as The NEST.

After returning from meeting a former lover and informant in Halabja, Iraq, Liam found his world has been turned upside down. In Belfast, an old friend has been shot, another has been robbed, and the executive director of BICA—Virginia Roosevelt-Woodburn—had been visited by Franco Delgado. A demon from both their pasts.

Now, tasked by BICA to locate and stop Delgado’s plans, Curran was offered a great gift: The opportunity to stop a war and bring down the leader of The NEST at the same time. His nightmares would end. How could he refuse? But, if he would have known where—and to whom—this mission would lead, Curran would have moved heaven and earth to go back in time and let the chips of Delgado’s threats fall where they may.

Plagued with the uncertainty of who to trust, Curran will find himself face to face with a past he never knew existed and an endless mesh of decisions that will lead to someone he loves dying at the center of Araseli’s Web.

Michael Shayne grew up in southern West Virginia, served in the Air Force, graduated from West Virginia University (BSEE) and Wheeling University (MBA) before settling in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife, daughter, and a dog. Goal Number One-check! What's missing from the tale perhaps begins with his 13th great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Wyatt, the official poet of Henry VIII. Or maybe his grandfather who was with the local newspaper. Or being named after Brett Halliday's sleuth. Either way, those Norman and Scotch-Irish genes have compelled him to spin yarns since he was old enough to hunt and peck on Smith Corona. A ravenous reader, he's usually engulfed in two novels, something non-fiction, iced with an audiobook at the same time he's writing. Outside of writing, he found himself working as an electrical engineer, project manager, product developer and business development executive in the electric utility and telecommunications industries.