the Man on County Road

A voice in the woods. Eleven seconds of video. A missing ranger who may-or may not-be the man on the county road.At 4:23 p.m., trail runner Rachel Norren sends her sister a photograph from the North Fork overlook. Minutes later, she hears a child calling for help below the marked trail. But the cry repeats too perfectly. Hidden beneath the leaves is a speaker-and somewhere behind her, a man claims to be preserve maintenance.Three days earlier, investigators searching for missing ranger Owen Merren are studying eleven seconds of grainy county-road footage. A lean figure in dark trousers, a pale shirt, and a broad-brimmed hat walks west past a campground camera. There is no visible face. Forty-one seconds earlier, a white utility van crossed the same road.As Claire Rennick and the investigators begin testing what the cameras actually prove, the evidence leads to hidden service routes, a missing project van, staged clothing, concealed audio equipment, and a cave system where a familiar voice may be the most dangerous thing to follow.When Rachel disappears, the investigation becomes a race to separate physical evidence from carefully manufactured deception-and to determine who is using the search itself as part of the crime.The Man on the County Road, Book 3 of The Unit 214 Files, is a tense forensic crime thriller built around missing persons, procedural investigation, wilderness search and rescue, and one question that refuses to go away: Who was the man on the county road?