Out of Scope

A missing millions heist. A deep-state conspiracy. And an $18,450 check fraud warrant that just turned a small Missouri town into a maximum-security prison.

To his neighbors in his quiet, rural Missouri community, Marcus Vance is just a steady, dependable local handyman trying to make ends meet. He's the guy next door who can re-roof a barn, fix a busted transmission, and make it home in time to cook dinner for his three kids. His wife thinks his days as an overseas security contractor are ancient history. He's fought hard to keep it that way.

But Marcus is hiding a past life as an elite, black-budget military intelligence operative-and a ghost from that life just found him.

When Marcus's family bank accounts are suddenly frozen and a local deputy pulls into his driveway with an out-of-state felony warrant, he realizes he's been caught in a flawless, calculated trap. His former partner didn't just steal millions on their last deployment; he forged Marcus's name on a minor check to weaponize the legal system.

It's an $18,450 digital handcuff. The amount is a felony large enough to flag Marcus's passport and lock him geographically to a fixed map coordinate, but small enough to stay completely beneath the radar of the FBI.

He is pinned. And a heavy corporate elimination crew is already moving in from St. Louis to sanitize the boundaries.

They don't want him dead-not until they extract the encryption key to a classified data drive hidden deep on his property. A drive containing treasonous nuclear secrets that could shatter the global defense architecture.

Wounded, broke, and with local law enforcement closing in on one side and a professional death squad on the other, the handyman is out of options. To protect his family, Marcus must drop the mask, dig up his cold-stored weapons, and turn the dense, freezing Missouri timber into a tactical kill zone.

They thought a small-town contractor would be an easy retrieval. They forgot that a master craftsman knows exactly how to tear a structure down.

If you love the grounded, blue-collar grit of Jack Reacher combined with the relentless, tactical suspense of The Terminal List, discover the explosive debut of the new series by R.J. Blake.

Enter the grid with Marcus Vance tonight!

R.J. Blake writes the kind of authentic, high-tension thrillers that only a true craftsman could engineer. Drawing from his diverse background as a construction contractor and auto mechanic, Blake brings absolute technical precision to every page of Out of Scope. His debut novel introduces a world where tactical logic operates in the gray areas of the law. A resident of Missouri, Blake divides his time between building projects and plotting Marcus Vance's next moves. Connect with him on ⁠Facebook at R.J. Blake Author.