In this brand-new digitally exclusive novella from Edgar Award finalist Mike Lawson, beloved Washington D.C. troubleshooter Joe DeMarco finds himself face to face with Ella Fields, a cunning, ruthless woman he thought he'd locked up behind bars for good.

Ella Fields was supposed to serve 14 long years, but thanks to a combination of good behavior on her part and prison over-crowding, she was now free after just five years. Well, not quite free, thanks to parole.

If she behaved herself?if she was a model citizen?she would go from being a supervised parolee to a mostly unsupervised one and might eventually be able to live a normal life. A life that might not even be worth living, because she was completely broke and the only skills she had were the ones that had landed her in prison.

So, her future looked grim, and she didn't know what she'd do in the long term.

But she did know what she was going to do next.

She was going to kill the scumbag responsible ruining her life.

She was going to kill Joe DeMarco.