Loss of Control

Life is good for Jake Berwyn. He owns his own software business, has a beautiful live-in girlfriend, and races cars on the weekends for fun. Good, that is, until his best friend is involved in a horrific racing accident and dies when Jake is unable to pull him free of the wreckage. When the accident turns out to have been the result of sabotage, Jake's outrage and feelings of loyalty compel him to try to solve his friend's murder.

Jake wades his way through a memorable cast of characters including his girlfriend, Jen, who's both sensuous and smart; the new widow, with whom Jake had a brief affair; her mother, a smoking hot 60-something widow; the mother's plastic surgeon boyfriend; and the dead man's business partner.

Jake fights a frustrating battle against disappearing evidence, and the increasing disinterest of the authorities. When he discovers the victim and his partner had been poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars-money that won't be paid now due to a clause executed automatically upon the death-he's pretty sure he's found his motive...but wrong. When his inquiries start bringing him a little too close to the truth, Jake and Jen endure both physical and mental threats, along with several exciting close-calls.

From beginning to end, this first-person story paints the picture of a reluctant hero, thrust further and further into uncontrollable circumstances by the combination of his loyalty to a dead friend, and turning over rocks some others don't want looked beneath. Jake's love of racing acts as a colorful backdrop to an engaging and hard-to-put-down story of sex, greed, and murder.

The story culminates with a riveting race against time as Jake and Jen try to track down a stolen cell phone-the key to everything-before its battery runs out and the trail goes cold. Ultimately, in an exciting scene wrought with confusion and emotion, Jake learns not only the truth about his friend's death but also about another, even more secretive, truth, which changes everything.