The Crisis

She wants to quit smoking. He wants to start a nuclear war.
They both want the girl with the cryptic tattoo.
Stuck working at a backwater convenience store in the middle of northern Florida, Mattie longs for a cigarette. She longs for her days as a marine biologist at the Queen Aquarium down south. She longs for her best friend—Hank the Manatee. Her colleagues blamed her for his death, and now, she blames herself. She should have done something sooner.
Today, a nervous couple enters the convenience store. The man is big, bald, and has a tight grip on the girl’s arm. The girl is small, young, and has a number tattooed on her leg. It looks like a brand.
After they leave, Mattie finds a note on the floor.
“. . . Blue Honda mini-van going to Salt Springs. Someone named Stanley.”
A similar thing happened to Mattie’s cousin. This girl is being kidnapped. Trafficked. The note isn’t enough for the police to care, but Mattie does. She jumps into her decrepit Toyota wagon and flies onto the highway, wasting no time. She’s got to stop that mini-van before it reaches Salt Springs. She’s got to save that girl before she’s sold to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, a militant rebel has sent his men to the US. He’s been searching for a young woman with a cryptic tattoo on her leg for over ten years. When his men bring her to him, he’ll finally have the negotiating power he needs to overthrow the Cuban government. He’ll have the power to make the United States listen to Cuba for once.
It’s only a matter of time.
His men are already in Salt Springs, waiting for her.


T.O. Paine writes award-winning psychological and crime thrillers that keep you up all night. Some of it comes from imagination. Some of it comes from the four years his family spent inside a cult — an experience that lends his fiction an unsettling authenticity readers can feel.

His novels, including The Teaching, The Abduction, and The Crisis, have been honored by the Chanticleer Global Thriller Awards, Literary Titan, BookLife, and Readers' Favorite. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, the Crime Writers' Association, and Sisters in Crime, and holds a master's degree in computer information systems.

When he isn't writing, Paine is usually running — he has finished a marathon in all fifty states and is working through all fifty a second time, and he has survived an IRONMAN, twice. He lives in Colorado with his wife and shares his office with two rescue dogs he calls his muses. Chaz, a pampered cocker spaniel with strong opinions about cookies, and Muñeca, a street dog he brought home from Mexico who, he swears, keeps the bad people in his books away from him so he can write.

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