A Card Not Played

Description

This novel is the third installment in a series featuring my character Lilly DeFranco.
The two previous novels are THE UNEVEN SURFACE OF THE SOUL and A LIGHER
SHADE OF GRAY. I have just started working on the fourth in the series with the
working title INTO WRONGDOING.

Lilly DeFranco is an outlaw, but more out of her life’s circumstances than intent. In
the first novel, she is 39 years old, and as the story it opens she is five years into a
fifteen year prison sentence for armed robbery. She is released to aid the DEA and
ATF in their efforts to apprehend her former partner in crime who is involved in
selling arms to the Mexican cartels. At the end of that first novel, she is on the run
in Mexico and is being pursued by both the cartels and the US authorities.

Her story continues in A LIGHTER SHADE OF GRAY when she flees to Mexico
City in the hope of shedding her criminal past and starting a new life. She finds
employment with a Mexico City crime boss serving as his courier for his legitimate
business dealings. In spite of her efforts to go straight, her talents are once again
called upon in the service of her new boss.

In this latest novel, A CARD NOT PLAYED, she continues in her role serving the crime
boss Jeronimo Hermosa who is facing retirement and is in the process of divesting
himself of all his criminal enterprises. As this story opens, Lilly is overseeing the
harvest on Jeronimo’s agave plantation. The unexpected appearance of two
cartel figures, one of whom is known to her, sets in motion a complicated plot by
Jeronimo to rid himself of Miguel Becerra, a capo in the Jalisco cartel, who holds
Jeronimo responsible for the death of Becerra’s brother. Jeronimo plans to serve
as bait in the hope of luring Becerra to Austin and reveal Becerra’s presence to the
US authorities. Jeronimo dispatches his trusted underling and Lilly’s lover, Jaime
Soledad, to also travel to Austin to play the role of Jeronimo’s betrayer.

Lilly convinces Jeronimo to allow her to accompany him to Austin and act as his
eyes and ears. What ensues is a cat and mouse game involving Becerra, Jaime in
his role of serving two masters, and Vera, an enigmatic Mexican woman who is
Becerra’s intermediary and is not who she seems. Lilly finds herself caught in the
middle of the conflicting schemes as she attempts to protect both Jeronimo and
Jaime.

The plot goes awry, and Lilly and Jeronimo find themselves captives and facing
certain death at the hands of Becerra. Their only hope is that Jaime and the
duplicitous Vera find them in time to rescue them.