Sustained by a deep religious faith, Jason Harrow has built a stable family and become a pillar of principle and patriotism in the Midwest. Then the phone rings, and his past is on the other end of the line.A woman with whom he once shared a life of violence and desire claims her daughter is missing and Jason is the one man who can find her. Returning to New York City, Jason finds himself entangled in a murderous conspiracy only he can see and only he can stop a plot that bizarrely links his private passions to the turmoil of a world at war. Hunted by terrorists and by the police, Jason has only hours to unravel an ex-lovers lies and face the unbearable truth: In order to prevent a savage attack on his country, hes going to have to risk his decency, his sanity, and his life.

ANDREW KLAVAN is the author of such bestselling novels as True Crime, adapted into a film by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say a Word, adapted into a film starring Michael Douglas. His novels have been nominated for the Edgar Award four times and have won twice. He lives in Southern California.

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1. Out of the Past The day it began was an autumn day, a Saturday afternoon in October. I was sitting in a cushioned chair on the brick patio at the edge of my backyard. The air was clear and warm with a hint of chill in it. There was a wind off the lake across the waythunderstorms coming, though they werent yet visible over the water. I was looking down half an acre of grassy slope to where my two boys, Chad, ten, and Nathan, seven, were organizing some kind of Frisbee game around the swing set with some of their friends from the neighborhood. The boys were letting their three-year-old sister, Terry, tag along with them. I found this very heartwarming. I was forty-five years old. The reedy figure of my youth was growing thicker at the chest and waist, but I was still trim enough. My once-sandy hair was thinner and darker, with a sprinkling of gray. My once-boyish face was not so boyish anymore, though I think it was what they used to call an honest face, smooth, clean, and open, the blue eyes bright. My wife was in the kitchen making us some lemonade. My wife was named Cathy and I cant say how much I loved her, not without sounding like a sentimental idiot, anyway. We had been together twelve years then, and I still sat up sometimes at night and watched her sleeping. Sometimes I woke her because I felt so grateful for her and so passionate I couldnt help but trace her features with my fingertips. If this bugged the hell out of her, she never let on. But then, she was a cheerful and generous creature who would melt into lovemaking at a look or a touch. We had a deal between us, Cathy and I. Our deal was simple. It was agreed to at the start in no uncertain terms. When I first came to this town from New York seventeen years ago, I edited the local paper. I started out as city editor and was promoted to managing editor pretty quickly. The city had an insanely left-wing government at the time, and so, of course, it was spiraling into bankruptcy and chaos. There were high taxes supporting lavish payoffs to the unions, high crime because of lenient judges and tight restrictions on the police, and strangulation by regulation for any businessman stupid enough to hang around. It was a government like a garrulous fat man moralizing over a dinner for which he would never pick up the bill. I helped run them out of town. My paper printed story after story showing why every one of their policies would fail and proving it by showing where they had failed in the past. Plus we exposed the corrupt political machine churning away as usual under all the welfare. Within three years, the voters threw the bums out. The unions were crushed in the next round of contract negotiations. Taxes and useless programs were cut. Bad guys started going to prison. New businesses started popping up, people started making money again, andsurprise, surprise!the governments share of the profits brought it back from the brink despite the lower taxes. In short, the street

Excerpted from Empire of Lies by Andrew Klavan
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