The October Men: The Empty Chair
Every October, five retired cops gather at a cabin in the Sierra Nevada. This year, one chair is empty.
Marcus Latrobe has never missed the gathering. When his four oldest friends discover he secretly flew to Houston weeks earlier, they follow — and find every parent's nightmare. Marcus's sixteen-year-old daughter, Lindsey, has been kidnapped and pulled into a cartel human-trafficking operation. He didn't call the police. He didn't call his friends. He went after her alone.
Now the October Men are going after him.
Two old friends. Two false identities. One mistake could expose them both — and somewhere inside the operation, dozens of women are waiting to disappear. Including Lindsey.
The Soldier
In the future, they didn't build better soldiers. They kept what made them human.
Master Sergeant Stone has spent twenty years in the Marine Corps, and war has taken pieces of him along the way — replaced by military tech that makes him stronger, faster, harder to kill. But with every replacement, there's a little less of the man who enlisted.
Then PFC James Reyes arrives: a fully cybernetic Marine built to do everything a human soldier can, and more. He follows orders. He completes the mission. He doesn't hesitate — and he doesn't understand why a Marine would risk the mission to save another Marine.
As the war grinds on, Stone must confront a question no manual can answer: how much of a man can be replaced before the man himself is gone?