Lovely Night to Die

When everything goes bad, as it sometimes does, we are left with too many roads to take, and it's hard to know which one will lead us to safety. Such are the choices faced with the man on the run. It can be a frightening road to travel. As one reviewer said, "Pirtle’s taut, punchy prose takes the reader on an eventful journey against apparently unsurmountable odds and choices that have no good outcome until he comes face to face with the hardest choice he has ever had to make.

Why should she fall in love with a man she defended in court/ Does she know he’s a CIA assassin? Does she know he has orders to kill the President? Does she know she will die if he fails? What else doesn’t she know?

Roland Sand has killed two government operatives sent to execute him. He is arrested and represented in court by a beautiful young public defender, Eleanor Trent. Their eyes connect. So do their hearts, but both keep their feeling buried deep inside them.

Eleanor does not know that Sand is an assassin for a rogue intelligence agency that sells its deadly services to foreign nations as well as to its own country. He has angered his chief, the one-eyed Bohemian, by refusing to kill an accountant who accidentally saw the details of a top-secret mission. Sand sees no reason why an innocent man should die.

The Bohemian’s agents kidnap Sand and take him from the Durango, Colorado, jail. He is given one chance to redeem himself. He must carry out the assignment to assassinate the President of the United States. It is a mission sanctioned from inside the United States government.

Eleanor is furious, and she is frightened. She has lost cases before. But never has she lost a client. In desperation, he calls Navy SEAL Commander John Nickols to help her track down the missing Roland Sand. She handled a case for one of Nickols’s friends years earlier, and he said she could count on him if she ever needed him.

At Midway Airport, Sand awaits the arrival of Air Force One. The President comes down the steps, and Sand sees Eleanor in the greeting committee. He is told, “Kill the President or we kill the lady.” He has only a second to make up his mind. And Nickols knows, if necessary, he must kill Sand to save the President.