peter nealen

“The hit came only a few miles outside of Green Valley. We’d been hanging back behind a pair of Old Dominion semis, pacing them. As the semis rolled past the rest area outside of Green Valley, one of the two pickups we’d seen earlier darted out and T-boned the trailing truck. The truck jack-knifed across the road, the trailer swinging around to block both lanes as the driver struggled to maintain control, doubtless rattled by the impact. Smoke rose from sqealing tires, and it looked for a second like he was going to be able to hold it, but then the right side tires came off the pavement and the truck rolled on its side, the trailer skidding on the asphalt a little farther before coming to a halt. Nick reacted immediately, swerving toward the median, aiming to get around the stricken tractor-trailer and out of the kill zone. It was exactly what he should have done, and it would have worked if the driver of the box truck behind him hadn’t panicked.

Here’s a snippet from The Devil You Don’t Know: “If Larry was getting the heebie-jeebies, I was generally inclined to listen. I’d known Larry off and on for the better part of a decade; we’d been teammates as Marines, working with Filipino Recon Marines way back when, and then founding members of Praetorian Security. (Though the name had been changed a few months ago to Praetorian Solutions for marketing reasons that were completely opaque to me.) I’d been through the hairiest parts of my life so far with the big, bald galoot, and I trusted him with my life. So far the trucks trailing us weren’t really doing anything squirrelly, aside from following us. It could be explained as just going the same way and not being in much of a hurry. But we were escorting this cargo for a reason, and I wasn’t going to dismiss a possible threat. I studied them for a few more moments, then faced forward again, settling in my seat and keying my radio. “Security halt, one hundred meters.”