The Adam Chaser

Professor Abington has come to the Arizona caves chasing something ancient, a whisper of hieroglyphics, a fossilized hint that could rewrite history. When his car dies in a remote canyon, he stumbles into something far more immediate: Bill Jonathan, a dangerous prisoner fleeing the law. The man escapes, but not before Abington discovers a cryptic cigarette case that hints at bigger mysteries waiting in these hills. Then arrive Betsy O'Donovan and her niece Jean, two women ostensibly hunting for valuable minerals. To Abington, they reek of rival science, spies sent by academic competitors to steal his discoveries. Trust curdles into suspicion. But when the desert turns lethal and danger forces Abington and Jean to fight for their lives as enemies, their assumptions crumble. They discover that survival demands something harder than courage: vulnerability. B. M. Bower writes with sharp eyes for the Western landscape and the human heart alike. This is adventure fiction that understands tension lives not just in gunfights and collapsing caves, but in the spaces between people who refuse to see each other clearly. For readers who love early American adventure with a pulse of romantic tension beneath its rugged surface.