Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy

What would make someone become a hired assassin? What kind of life would this person have led that would turn them into a coldblooded killer? Yet this nameless person who shares her fears, desires, hopes and despair after losing her family, reminds readers that there might be a shred of decency there, but it would take unveil all her layers to find the true her. Living in the woods with just her dog, she is isolated and alone. Preferring it that way and yet she ventures out only when a job is in the offering. Entering a restaurant what is supposed to be a date with someone she never met, we hear her voice explaining that she must find  way to take his life and make sure that she has a plan to escape and is not caught. Another hit involves her going to the airport and she notices someone that might be following her. At times you wonder if she is not paranoid or just careful and hanging back and not boarding until the last minute you wonder if this man was really watching her, but he disappears too. The next job she realizes as she is about to enact what she is being paid a lot to do, she cannot kill this person, she calls her handler and from this point on things take a different turn. Remembering her family, the loss of her mother that follows and her unstable life, you wonder how she can calmly take a person’s life and the next job is different. She is told to protect the Chief Technical Officer of a unicorn start up company. Virginia Martin is smart, PHD at Stanford and is developed research that makes her technology different and better. Greenmill Energy put her on to develop the low energy waste to energy system intended for home use. The author goes about describing it. it’s a breakthrough technology to sink in. They group her on as a disruptor and her technology was disruptive. It will change the world they raise a lot of money before they got anywhere near the monies needed.

Meeting her at a salon she gets a sense of the kind of person that she is and is there to get a handle on her movements and schedule. She must watch her round the clock when she is not home and at one point she spots a car that should not be there, the driver is suspicious, and she takes him out. All too careful and making sure that she is not hit our narrator decides to pretend to want to invest in the company and that is when it gets interesting. Meeting those in charge, getting the tour of the company and meets Rance, Lisa and those in charge. Shown the labs, the places where the technology is developed and then meeting Martin who gives her an uneasy feeling that he has something to hide. Virginia takes her on a technical tour and the author developed chapters filled with research to help readers understand what this company does. Things develop in many directions leading to the narrator to receive information about her family. Not in touch with her brother she hesitates to meet with him. Learning the truth about her mother’s death and delving more into the technology of Extreme Angels. The staff wants her aboard, but she is smart, swift and realizes that there is something she is not seeing. She is also not happy with her life, yet she continues. Learning more about Hattie who is out cold in Virginia’s apartment, she finds photos, documents and more which she takes pictures of. What is her reason for having them? There are others that are involved like something called Daddy McPhee and his real identity. There are so many involved you won’t believe the reasons why Virginia was or might have been a target. Someone wanted the company to tank: WHO AND WHY? The scary part is what she sees when Virginia and Hattie are doing something and there are some staff members that disappeared. The reality of what happens to them is frightening and why you won’t believe!

Lives are at stake; some will be sacrificed in a horrific way. The narrator must dig deep inside herself as she witnesses something that will stay within her mind forever. Not everyone is what they seem. Some disappear. Her contact Curtis is her stable and is there when things get out of hand. Her handler has her own reasons for her reaction at the end. Murder, extortion, corruption, stock shorting, lies, deceptions and a narrator that wants a change in her life but will she? Paid to kill others. Does she show any remorse? When she speaks to the PI she learns more about the death of her husband and who the real target was but why remains unknown. A story filled with unsettling moments, surprises and a narrator that needs to dig deep inside herself to see if change is in the air, remorse and realizing that she needs might need some help. She is safe and might survive if she has a good EXIT STRATEGY!

Fran Lewis: Just reviews