Gunshots in the Midst of Flames (Preview)

Chapter One

San Francisco, California 1870

When the bed shook Parker Slayton awake, he thought it was another earthquake. He sat up in the dark, listening to the world outside the window. People were moving in the street below.

“Parker, are you awake?” Amie asked from outside his bedroom door. His sister was a light sleeper.

“Yeah, the earthquake woke me,” he said, sitting up. The iron springs under the mattress needed oiling again; they squeaked as he moved.

“That wasn’t an earthquake.” Amie’s voice was thick with worry.

She had opened the bedroom door. Amie’s hair was unraveled, soft auburn waves falling over slender shoulders, and her face pinched with fright.

Parker pulled at the window shade to peer out. A red-orange glow flickered through the fog.

“I got to go,” he said, bolting from the bed to get dressed.

“Please be careful.”

Amie had said those three words more than any other phrase throughout their lifetime. She didn’t need to say I love you because Parker understood when Amie spoke of safety, it was her way of expressing how important he was to her.

Amie got out of Parker’s way so he could move freely from the bedroom into the tiny living space they shared. It took little time for him to put on boots, grab his knit cap and wool coat, and run down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. He passed by a neighbor in a nightshirt who was just stepping out of his apartment, bumping the man.

“Sorry, Mr. McLeod,” Parker said.

“What was that?” McLeod asked. “I heard a boom.”

“It’s a fire.” Parker ran outside, hooking a left along Montgomery Avenue and heading into the heart of Chinatown.

Along the street, leather waterskins began raining from the window ledges. People weren’t willing to risk their lives battling blazes, but many of them willingly handed over their water receptacles to anyone as brave as Parker. The smoke and fog mingled, obscuring the view between the buildings, and the stench of a structure fire clung to his nose. The limited breeze along Kearny Street meant the fire didn’t get much help from the lack of prevailing wind.

More people appeared from building doorways or leaning out their windows, dotting the building façades. The frightened faces of Chinese immigrants watched Parker with caution. They had ample reason to fear a white man running along the avenues of Chinatown, but many of the men and women watching from their doorsteps knew Parker by face, even if they didn’t speak English or know his name.

Some of the younger Chinese men took up the pace, running with Parker and collecting empty and full waterskins. Parker held off from grabbing anything extra, not wanting to carry more weight before he arrived at the scene. He sprinted by Jackson Street and then Washington Street. He cut across Portsmouth Square, taking a shortcut to Clay Street before turning left on Dupont.

The closer he got to the fire, the more people he encountered. Men young and old filled the streets, pouring out of buildings like rats from sinking ships and shouting in Mandarin and Cantonese. Ahead of Parker was the orange monster breathing fire through a veil of smoke and fog. He couldn’t see the structure through the miasma, only the glowing blaze.

As he ran the last few yards, he slipped on the wool coat and snatched a pail of water from a street rain barrel. He pulled the bandana over his mouth and nose before pouring the water over his head. Others fought the fire from outside. But if there was a threat to life and a thread of hope, Parker was one of the people willing to endure hell to save lives.

The fire had already consumed most of the ground floor of the boot and shoe factory on the corner of Dupont and Sacramento Street. The large three-story building housed other enterprises, including a bazaar, tea store, and cigar store. All three businesses had doorways leading into the south entrance, where the shoe factory took up the majority of the building.

“Is there anyone inside?” Parker asked. “Please, does anyone know if there’s anyone still inside?”

Some of the Chinese immigrants knew enough English to communicate when necessary—understanding the language was a necessity for living in San Francisco.

The heat of the blaze had already made the water-soaked banana and his shirt begin to steam. The egress to the factory was impossible to breach—the fire had consumed the entrance and belched from the doorway and windows facing the structure’s south side.

“No one in the factory,” a young man said as he hurried by Parker.

Parker followed him. He didn’t know the Chinese man, but the English gave Parker hope. He had a conduit to the others, a translator for the emergency.

“Where are you going?” Parker asked once he caught up to the young man.

“Other side,” he said, running faster, leaving the fiery entrance and turning right on California Street.

Parker followed him around the corner, heading into a throng of pedestrians drawn to the fire. Many had already started dousing the blaze with the pails and waterskins, but Parker had enough experience with structure fires to recognize a lost cause. Smoke had won the battle between humidity and fog around the building. The choking black stuff poured from the windows as the heated glass cracked and broke away.

Men bumped into him, but he continued following the young man. Before Parker could ask another question, the young man shouldered his way into a doorway on the west side of the building. Inside, the hallway leading upstairs was clear of smoke. But the walls sweated. The heat intensified.

They had entered the apartment on Salina Place. Many families occupied the lodgings on the third floor above the factory.

“Watch it,” Parker said, pulling at the young man’s arm.

He had halted their progress to prevent the young man from stepping through the bubbling floorboards of the stairwell. The fire had reached below them. When the wood buckled, black smoke seeped up through the slats. With another opening to the flames, the fire could breathe, expand, and devour more of the building.

“Thank you,” the young man said before hopping over the weakened steps.

Parker followed, keeping a hand tight around the railing in case the stairs gave way.

“Where are you going?”

“My sister,” the young man said before coughing. “She live here.”

They reached the third floor. Around them, the walls heated up, the smoke clawing at the stairwell. Parker’s eyes began to water. The young man gasped and pressed against the wall when a rattling cough overtook him. He tripped over articles of clothing and personal possessions the fleeing tenants had dropped in the hallway.

“Breathe through your clothes,” Parker said.

The young man nodded, pulling at his shirt collar before continuing down the hallway. He shouted, banging on every door still closed. Many of the doors inside the hallway hung open. Occupants had already fled the fire.

When he reached the end of the hall, the door was open to a tiny one-room apartment. Three bedrolls cluttered the floor.

“She’s not here,” Parker said. He faced the young man. “We need to—”

Something faint caught his attention. He stopped talking. The young man coughed, trying to get a clean breath through the fabric of his shirt. The smoke began to fill the apartment.

“No, don’t do that,” Parker said, hooking a hand on the young man’s arm before he could pull open the window. “It brings more smoke.”

“Cannot breathe,” the young man said after several attempts.

“I know,” Parker said. His lungs burned. “Did you hear that?”

The bandana around his face had more perspiration than water in it, and the salty fabric pressed against his open mouth and nose. He had more endurance for smoke. It scraped his eyes and scorched his sinuses, but the smoke clawing its way into his lungs hadn’t made him cough like the young man.

He took the man’s arm, leading him out of the sister’s apartment. Parker stopped at a closed door across the hall when they retraced their steps. He put his hand against the wood. The warmth of the fire permeated the door. He reached for the doorknob, testing it with his fingertip. The metal bit his skin.

Before he moved away, a faint sound from the other side of the door had him staring wide-eyed at the young man.

“You hear that?”

The young man nodded.

Parker stepped back and lifted his foot. Using the thick leather sole of his boot, he planted the kick right next to the doorknob, shattering the latch. The door swung inward, and a blast of unfiltered heat struck them like something solid. The young man buckled, falling to his knees. Parker lifted both arms to shield his face.

“Hello?” Parker shouted through the smoke.

The floorboards had orange and red lines scratched into them. The seams of the wood buckled under the strain. Nails clung to the wood, but it was only a matter of minutes before the fire below found its way into the apartment.

The young man shouted something in Chinese. He waited a few seconds, covering his mouth with the crook of his elbow, then shouted again. When the response came, it was tiny and far away. Someone had been left behind. Someone needed help.

Parker grabbed the young man, pulling at his thin waist, using the momentum to spin him away toward the stairwell.

“You can’t go in there,” Parker said. “Get out. I’ll go.”

Panicked and coughing, when the young man spoke again, it was in his native language. He tried pushing by Parker. He was too weak, too thin to get by.

“Stay back,” Parker said. He pointed at the floor. “You step there, and you’ll go right through.”

The tiny voice called again.

“I go. She need help.”

“I’ll go. You get back outside,” Parker said.

He shoved the young man down the hallway before leaping over the weakened floorboards into the apartment. Smoke burned his eyes. He had to rely on other senses to get around. He stumbled on something solid—a table. Parker pushed it out of the way.

“Hello. Where are you?”

He reached the exterior wall and put his hands on the window. As much as Parker wanted to open the window, he knew the fire would chase the air through the floor. He leaned against the wall, calling out, and kicked at another table. Something shattered on the floor. He stomped through broken glass. A cabinet in the corner had both doors closed. When Parker opened it, reaching inside, something moved away from his hands.

“Here, I’m here,” he said. He heard a yelp, followed by the tiny coughing that followed made him realize it was a little person.

Before the child could squirm away from Parker, he closed a grip around the arm. He dropped to his knees, reaching into the cabinet with both hands, finding a body struggling and fighting to break free. Parker squeezed the child tight.

“Stop moving,” he shouted. The little body writhed in his grip until he added more pressure. The child’s head collided with his nose and starbursts filled his eyes. He tasted the blood splashing against his mouth inside the fabric. The child squirmed, kicking and clawing at Parker, risking burning to death over being saved.

The child couldn’t break free. He had pinned the youngster against his chest and the cabinet wall. Behind him, the screech of joists and load-bearing beams broke free. The tremendous whoomp felt like the whole world broke free behind him seconds before the blast of intense heat cascaded over his back. He had shielded the child from the inferno, but the child screamed in his ear.

Parker squeezed tighter, refusing to let go. He glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, the conflagration had eaten away at the floor, and the combustion had caused fragments to ignite inside the one-room apartment. He couldn’t get back to the door or see the window. When the child went limp in his arms, Parker doubled his grip, pushing the face against his shoulder before moving away from the cabinet.

All around him, the facility complained. Wood groaned. Iron nails screamed. The structure shuddered as the intensity of the heat at his back made Parker want to scream out. He kept his arms around the child, tucked tight against his front as he pushed along the wall. Keeping close to the floor, he finally reached the window on his knees.

Covering his face and wrapping the child inside the wool coat, Parker used an elbow to smash the glass. The fire immediately leaped at his shoulder. It bit his knit cap and lapped at any exposed skin. The wool coat had protected him, but he was seconds away from losing consciousness. How far down was it? Two stories, and what waited for him below the window?

One constant Parker believed in the years he had run into burning buildings was that he’d rather die trying than succumb to flames. When he got up, slipped a leg through the broken window, and pushed off, Parker did his best to turn in mid-air to take the brunt of the impact on his back.

He smashed into stacks of wooden crates. The stench of rotten food enveloped him and he felt the cold slop against his face and hands. In his embrace, the child remained limp. The fall had knocked the wind out of him, and it took a few seconds before he could breathe again. The next gulp of air was clearer than anything inside the building. He pulled the bandana from his nose and mouth.

“Hey,” Parker called out.

His voice bounced off the alley walls. Above him, the window allowed the monstrous flames to claw at night. The fire bellowed and crackled, angry it hadn’t eaten him or the child before their harrowing escape. Parker held the child against him, rolling and twisting to get his boots on solid ground. It took several steps to break free of the stacked apple crates and collected garbage. A wharf rat jumped across his arm when he pivoted, and the oily black animal weighed as much as the child in his arms. It scurried away, diving into the damaged boxes.

“Hey, over here,” Parker shouted again. He reached the clear ground, falling to his knees before returning to his feet again.

A figure ran by the alley before stopping and approaching quickly, and Parker saw the soot-covered face of the young man he had chased into the apartments. The young man spoke rapidly in his native language. The child didn’t move. When a little hand fell limp from Parker’s grasp, the young man gasped at the sight, gripping the hand. They broke free of the alley, crossing California Street, getting completely clear before Parker dropped to his knees.

He kept his back to the structure fire. There was no going back. He had seen enough blazes to ignore another one, focusing on the child. Other people began crowding him. Men and women, old and young, encircled him as he shed the heavy wool coat, pulled off the knit cap, and stared at what he had claimed from the fire.

The small round face, pug nose, and almond-shaped eyes gave away nothing. Parker pulled at the collar of the child’s nightgown, shook the little shoulders. Silk black hair fell out of braids.

The young man spoke in Parker’s ear, but he couldn’t understand the language. Parker continued shaking the child gently, lifting the head and cradling the neck as the little mouth fell open. He heard a faint gasp as the airway cleared. The face changed, eyes opened, blinking quickly as a deep lungful of air went inside. A widening mouth wrapped it in a wail when it came out again.

Parker smiled, still holding the child as the cries continued. The young man clapped a hand on Parker’s shoulder, grinning and nodding at him. People murmured and spoke to each other. The frantic calls of a woman pierced his ears before someone yanked the child away from Parker’s hands. He watched as the mother embraced her child.

Parker sat on the ground, watching the reunion as the woman locked eyes with him. She clutched the child to her chest, backing away from Parker. A combination of relief and fear crossed her eyes. She disappeared among the other people that surrounded them before he even got a name or a thank you. But for Parker, it wasn’t about acknowledgment. He understood the fear—they had every right to be afraid of white men.

“You good man,” the young man said. “She live.”

Parker wiped his face with an arm. His tender nose wasn’t broken, but the blood had smeared across his sleeve.

“A little girl,” Parker said. “What’s her name?”

“Bai,” he said, offering a hand to Parker.

“What’s your name?”

“Shen,” he said.

“Did your sister get out, Shen?” Once on his feet, Parker was a head taller than the young man. He hadn’t noticed before that moment.

“Yes. She there,” Shen said, pointing to the crowd. “She with family.”

“That’s good,” Parker said.

He finally looked at the burning building. It was impossible to save, but anyone who lived in that district knew once the fire settled and the smoke cleared, they’d rebuild again. It might not happen all at once, but they’d eventually gather the materials needed and put up another building to take its place.

Shen stood beside Parker for a few minutes, watching the structure fire rage on. The blaze sapped the fog out of the air, and the black smoke billowed straight up. Before dawn, there’d be nothing left but charred wood and ash.

Chapter Two

Shortly after five in the morning, Parker left the Chinatown district, wandered back through Portsmouth Square, and limped home again. The structure fire had claimed the building and, from what he could gather with the willingness of Shen Lee’s interpreting, six other lives.

Parker had saved one life almost at the cost of his own, and learning about the other deaths had disheartened him. He saw the crowd of people at the far edge of the square.

White business owners had gathered at first light to assess the damages at a distance. Most proprietors that bought and sold goods with the Chinese immigrants on the fringes of their social divide weren’t divisive as the people who lived east of Montgomery Avenue. Immigrants rarely left the district, and the ones who did go looking for something outside Chinatown rarely ever returned or sent word of their successes or failures.

Parker retraced his familiar steps back up Kearney Street, where the local shop owners converged on the corner. Many of them pointed to the threads of smoke still floating in the distance.

“Hello, young man. Where are you going?” Todd Poole asked before he recognized Parker.

It was the kind of question someone might ask if they thought Parker didn’t belong on that side of town. Under the grime, it was hard to see his features.

“Oh, Mr. Slayton, I didn’t recognize you with all that soot.”

Parker carried the remains of the black wool coat in his arms and wanted to ignore the men standing around. Unfortunately, this route was the shortest distance to get home.

“What happened?” Malik Gates asked before his lips pressed into a fine line across his face. He wore skepticism like others wore shirts—it was frequent.

“The shoe factory burned down,” Parker said as he glanced over his shoulder at the cityscape across Chinatown. None of the buildings stood more than three stories, though a few spires reached another twelve feet into the air. But the smoke from the factory fire had smudged the sky.

“It’s not surprising,” Gates added.

Parker held back from saying anything he’d regret. The man was vocal about the Chinese, but so were many men who lived in the area.

They were at the crossroads of Chinatown. Most business and building owners had to contend with living close by because no one wanted to purchase their properties. Burdened by the location, Gates was louder than most of his counterparts. He wouldn’t lease to the immigrants, but Parker had nothing to say because Gates was his landlord.

“Those Chinamen never stop working,” the man went on. “One of them probably fell asleep smoking at work. They’re reckless and ignorant.”

Parker still had nothing to say, clenching his jaw. The building owner wasn’t among the other men standing on the corner as the rest of the city woke up, but no one challenged Gates’ claim. Gates was a known philander and had a penchant for skulking around other men’s wives. It was his illicit behavior that reached further than his money. The city council denied Gates’ bid for entry every year for the last five years. His capital dwindled, and his rent increased.

Gates often collected Parker’s monthly rent when Amie was the only person home. It happened on odd days, not always on the first of the month. It was as if Gates knew Parker’s schedule and visited the apartment whenever he was away.

Parker had discussed the situation with Amie, but she hadn’t made any claims of inappropriate behavior from the landlord. Though, she might not know of Gates’ reputation, only that the man made her uncomfortable.

“I thought I heard something last night,” Fred Spencer said, shaking the broom’s handle in his grip. They had gathered outside his dry goods store. “The wife thought it was another earthquake. We made nothing of it.”

“Why are you covered in soot?” Seth Thomas asked, frowning at Parker.

He was the general merchandise store owner adjacent to Spencer’s store. They compared inventory, ensuring never to sell the same items to customers. They catered to the Chinese, but Amie and Parker shopped the retailers because they were right around the corner from the apartment.

“He’s a volunteer fireman,” Gates said, flicking a cigarette butt into the street. He fished out the tobacco pouch to roll another. “Slayton thinks running into a burning building is better than anyone running out again.”

“Is that a fact, son?” Poole asked. “I never knew that. Did anyone get hurt?”

“They lost six souls as far as I heard,” he said, ready to leave the group.

“Meh, souls,” Gates muttered with the rolling paper against his mouth. “They ain’t got no souls.”

“Mr. Gates, I know your stance on them,” Parker said. “But soul or no soul isn’t up to us to determine.”

It was a risky thing to talk back to Gates. But given the company, surrounded by other men who had to contend with their real estate location, was willing to take immigrant money for goods and services, it put Gates in a corner.

The landlord fished a tobacco flake from his lips before lighting the cigarette with a wooden match.

“Well, even so, they live like rats. It’s no surprise there was another fire.”

“What’s that this year?” Poole asked. “Four?”

“Five,” Parker said.

“And it’s only April,” Poole added, clicking his tongue with a head shake.

Parker had attended each one, though the shoe factory was by far the largest and most fatal. People had escaped the other blazes.

“I don’t know how they can live like that,” Poole said.

He was the quietest of the group. As the only white barber, two doors down from dry goods and next door to the general merchandise seller, Poole wasn’t upfront about his views toward immigrants. Though, the sign in the barbershop window spoke louder than he ever did aloud: whites and blacks only.

Parker didn’t want to point out that blacks hadn’t been allowed in white businesses less than a decade ago. Many blacks shared the same disdain for the Chinese as the whites. Jobs were scarce for all ethnicities.

“I need to wash up and get to work,” Parker said.

“What about that coat?” Thomas asked. “I can order you another one.”

Parker patted it with his free hand. He had it draped over his left arm. The wool coat served well to keep the fire off his skin, while the knit cap stuffed in one of the pockets kept his hair from getting singed. Both saw better days as acceptable street attire.

“I think I can get a few more miles out of this. Thank you.”

“You’ll need something before winter. Come on by, we’ll get something ordered.”

“Thank you, Mr. Thomas. I might take you up on that,” Parker said. But he wouldn’t, and the man wouldn’t bother him again about it.

Several places in Chinatown, a stone’s throw from where they stood, catered to Parker and his sister. They got better service and better attention as customers than at Thomas’ or Spencer’s shops. If Parker didn’t find a tailor that could make repairs, he’d find a seller that could get him something comparable or better for a replacement.

As he walked away, Gates called to him.

“Hey, Slayton, why do you do it?” Gates asked.

“Do what?”

“Why do you run into those burning buildings when no one’s paying you for it?”

The four men stared at him, waiting for an answer that made them feel better about staying away from the danger. Parker couldn’t think of an answer that justified the question, so he shrugged.

“Have a good morning, gentlemen. I’m on my way to work.” Parker touched his blackened forehead before strolling the rest of the way to the building. He had to scrub up before he left for work. Amie had likely already gone.

***

By the waning years of the gold rush after ’55, the San Francisco Bay area expanded from more than fifty thousand people to over one hundred fifty thousand by ’69. California became a hub of the mining industry on the west coast, with the city serving as a financial center and principal mercantile for the trans-montane West. It rivaled Chicago with bankers, merchants, bonanza kings, and railroad tycoons.

Their combined empire stretched from Mexico to Alaska. After gold came the industries and the outlying parts of the Bay Area knitted together through networks of produce boats and ferries. Resource extraction and processing quickly grew with the influx of former miners’ laborers. Quicksilver and smelters, lumber mills and logging, food processing, and agriculture flowed through and around the city.

Yerba Buena cove couldn’t contain the number of men still seeking their fortunes, hoping for a dip in the gold fields. Once turned away, they sought employment in vineyards, slaughterhouses, wheat fields, and flour mills. The Pacific rolling mills employed more than four hundred men producing at three thousand tons of bar iron a year. The added laborers increased production to include puddle furnaces producing pig iron. The mills made iron for the railroad, wrought iron for steamships, and I-beams for bridges. Most workers were Irish immigrants, skilled iron molders, with Scotsmen added to their work crews.

By the end of the 60s, when the rest of the settlers from the East moved inland, the people on the West Coast contended with whatever they could to make ends meet. California was considered a resource-rich economy with enough laborers to fill the four dominant sectors that permeated the city: Furniture-making and lumber mills, metal-working and machine, food processing with flour mills and canning, and animal processing like tanneries, tallows, and butchers.

Amie worked in one of the smaller sectors of the city, in the garment industry, for a clothing manufacturer who made durable denim trousers and tents. Her employer, Levi Strauss, and his wife had a wholesale dry goods business on the ground floor of the garment factory where he sold handkerchiefs, purses, combs, and bedding, along with any of the clothing produced in the loft on Sacramento Street.

Amie and Parker were part of the fringe white consumers living in the cluster apartments of the city north of Market Street. The air around the place was permeated with cigar tobacco from the more than two hundred cigar makers in and around Chinatown. West of Market Street, children and women’s clothing manufacturers took up space in the same warehouses as silversmiths and jewelers, while around Union Square, specialty clothiers and luxury goods makers enjoyed finer clientele because of their exclusive marketing.

The separation from the main shopping district along Montgomery Street was happenstance for the immigrants who worked and lived within the financial center. As the point of entry for the majority of the Chinese immigrants, Chinatown held refuge from the hostilities following the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

The Burlingame Treaty of ’68 allowed for free immigration and travel within the United States. The landmark treaty, brokered between Qing China and the United States, established formal relations between nations. After the ratification in Peking in ’69, emigration to the United States from China created the most densely populated area in the entire country.

Mostly male immigrants came from China and became a source of cheap labor, hoping to send money home to support their families. However, secured loans for travel came with steep interest, coupled with a higher cost of living because business owners charged the Chinese more, making it difficult to pay back their debts promptly. Fears arose among non-Chinese workers regarding replacement, creating resentment toward immigrants. Racial tensions in the city often made it difficult for the police to keep the peace.

Yet among the hate and those who did their best to stay out of the way, Parker and his sister managed to survive, balancing on the edge because they had lived in San Francisco all their lives. Men like Gates trusted Parker and his sister. They weren’t outspoken about the Chinese. They lived shoulder to shoulder with the immigrants, but they worked shoulder to shoulder with whites and blacks.

Parker rushed to finish washing before he set out on the shortcut through side streets and back alleys to get to the job site in time. He carried a large reinforced leather tool bag that clanked against his hip as he walked at speed. It had taken four years of sometimes severely scrutinized carpentry work to achieve his journeyman status as a joiner, but Parker was more than a carpenter, tradesman, or cabinet maker. He was an artisan with talents with wood that others didn’t possess.

He had experience as a shopfitter and doing carving and wood turning. He sometimes made close to $2 a day, depending on the job, and saved his money to purchase the necessary tools to do the work. Parker had the experience at twenty-seven that men twice his age hadn’t achieved. Crafting projects from conception to completion was a gift that wealthy men paid for and sometimes kept him employed through smaller jobs around their luxurious homes.

While Parker hurried off to work, already late for the job, a few city blocks away, a former acquaintance ended his overnight shift by stumbling into a mystery.

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“Gunshots in the Midst of Flames” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

When a fire erupts in a shoe factory, volunteer firefighter Parker Slayton fearlessly risks his life to save anyone trapped in the building. As soon as he saves a little girl from the fire, a chain of murder and mayhem begins, turning the lives of the townspeople upside-down. Now he must call on the only man who can help but his former best friend is not one to let go of past grudges so easily…

Old disagreements are a luxury when everyone’s life is on the line…

Sergeant Harvey Glynn is a no-nonsense man with a whip-smart attitude that gets him into more trouble than the chief of police can handle sometimes. His current mission is to capture a mysterious figure setting fires all over Chinatown. When Parker, his oldest friend, and greatest foe, comes with a deal he can’t refuse, they’ll both get much more than they bargained for.

Can he put his passion for justice above everything else?

Bullets fly, and buildings burn while Parker and Harvey hunt for a madman willing to kill anyone that stands in his way. When they learn the truth, they’ll need to risk it all for the sake of a child’s life and the soul of the city. Will they put aside their resentment, or will their bitterness toward each other be their undoing?

“Gunshots in the Midst of Flames” is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

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