Beau

What was supposed to be a leisurely stroll through a peaceful cemetery after a recent funeral turns into the start of a new case. Someone clobbers Doreen over the head and leaves her facedown among the funeral flowers.

Is it random violence? Revenge? A warning of worse to come?

No one knows, not even Doreen, but one thing is certain: the attack enabled the disappearance—perhaps the abduction?—of Doreen’s beloved African gray parrot, Thaddeus. Frantic, Doreen foregoes a trip to the emergency room in favor of heading straight home, where she hopes Thaddeus will return sooner rather than later.

When he does show up, riding a branch down the river, coming right home, he’s different, and all he can talk about is Big Guy. He’s also sporting an SOS message fastened around his ankle… Doreen sets out to retrace Thaddeus’s path, while Mack hunts down her attacker.

Between birds and boys and Corporal Mack Moreau’s brother, the lawyer looking into her divorce situation, Doreen has her hands full. And that’s before her former lawyer shows up unexpectedly at her home! Off-balance by all these events, Doreen opens her door to someone with a serious grudge to take her down …

Traveling to China to retrieve a kidnapped scientist shows Diesel the depths of human depravity. Not that he needs more proof. He’s been doing this type of work for a decade. This is the first time though the person he was rescuing was this interesting.

Eva Langston had been kidnapped while walking across the street and then locked up in a lab half a world away. Joining two other scientists, both letting her know there was no escape, she refuses to give up hope. When the rescue does come, it wasn’t smooth or easy.

Still she was damn glad to be free. Until she realizes that freedom is a long way off, as, one by one, her science team is picked off, leaving her the last one to be dealt with.