The Highwayman

Book excerpt: A murdered child predator surfaces in a New Jersey bog. Authorities in Pennsylvania and Ohio find more dead deviants days later as a vigilante weaves a trail of orchestrated slaughter through states along Route 80 to California. FBI Special Agents Patti Moreland and Nick Redmond track Internet predators in Chicago. After a failed attempt on Redmond's life, the FBI thinks one of his past collars pulled the trigger, but Moreland, a child-abuse survivor, believes otherwise. The young agent hacks his laptop and decrypts a sexually charged chat transcript between Redmond and a teenage girl logged hours before his shooting. Moreland learns of the murders in other states and sees a connection to her partner. She can’t fathom Redmond being like one of the men who scarred her life, and knows of only one way to disprove it: find the killer.