The Cure

This is book one of the Kat Beckman series and the main character is married to Steve and they have a four year old son Jack. Kat is a journalist and has only been doing pretty easy stories, nothing serious, since her accident in Afghanistan, where she worked as an embedded reporter. She is currently working from home for her editor Van Peck, as her husband’s mother Laura has been ill with cancer for some eight months and is in hospital. Steve doesn’t like to leave her alone at night, so they have been taking turns to spend the night in her room, whilst the other looks after their son Jack. On the night in question, another nurse is on duty, rather than one she is used to, but still brings her a cup of tea and she ends up feeling really sleepy. As she almost falls asleep, a man comes in dressed as a doctor, and tells her that she won’t find the cure there and offers her a chance of a cure for her mother-in-law’s cancer, leaving her a gold medallion before he leaves the room. She then falls asleep for the rest of the night, never waking, which is unusual considering how knackered she is.

She has flashbacks from her time in the sandbox of conflict and suffers from PTSD still, although she has therapies to try and use to try and manage the memories. She was embedded with the Army and went out on a routine trip to a local village when their Humvee went to check, another in front of them was hit and burst into flames. Theirs was next and she end up with a shattered wrist and in shock, whilst five men lost their lives. Now she is writing easy stories, not quite puff pieces, with one of her current ones about a warehouse fire in a rundown area. It could just be a simple electrical fire, but someone was trying to take more electricity from the lines than it could manage, as they didn’t do it properly. The man arranging the warehouse for his employers Apex, is called Edgar Cahill and he always has to get a building near to the main hospital where they can find patients and clients for their business. He offers families the chance to start over again, without the shadow of cancer over their heads, all in exchange for something the company wants.

Examples of the outcomes for some of their patients are given in the story, as Edgar has a choice of a red, yellow or blue vial of serum to give to the patients and as you can expect, each has a different outcome. The Beckmans’s are the next family to be targeted and Kat has already been approached and given the medallion, which has led her to wonder if she should start a story about it all. Even one of the nurses on the ward thinks something is strange about a young girl with a cancer that should have led to her death, suddenly recovering completely. She makes copies of the girl’s records, but that was a dangerous move! It seems this company is after information and has places setup all around the world and is expanding constantly. Edgar doesn’t like to fly, so he mainly covers North America.

People are being chosen for the information they can provide for the company and how valuable it may be. When Laura takes a turn for the worse, Kat comes clean to her husband Steve about the medallion and what happened that night. He would do anything for his mother and they look for clues on the medallion and that leads them to the dark web! Kat is now left with a difficult decision on whether to do something for her family and save Laura, or if she should keep her loyalty to her country and refuse to reveal any secrets. What she finds, leads her to a maze of confusion, blackmail, murder and even treason. Family or country? Whatever she chooses will bring about serious consequences for her and her family, and maybe many others!

This story has way more twists and turns than you can ever expect and the ones at the end are colossal! People from Kat’s past will be brought back into her life, whether that will be to help or hinder her and if she should trust any of them, is unclear and you need to read to the end to find out for yourself. Her future and that of her family and friends is uncertain and will all be tied to her past! A veteran affected by what she saw in the Middle East, but with information that others will pay for, in the game where information is key. Secrets are worth more than life itself! A great story for the reporter in her and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next story in this series, as Kat has to deal with the aftermath of this episode, as well as a new story to come. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.

Kat Beckman’s mother in law is dying of cancer. There is a cure out there, but it comes with a huge price from some really shady people who only deal on the dark web. The price could cost Kat her freedom, leaving her son without his mother. Kat also suffers from PTSD from when she was a journalist in the Middle East. Kat has problems considering this, but her husband wants her to and pushes her into it. But then his mother refuses the treatment and he pushes her to get more. This involves her friends from the Middle East. But there is a twist that I never saw coming!!! I really enjoyed this story very much. I voluntarily reviewed an ARC.