Forsaken Country

Allen Eskens

Contents (81)

CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FICTION BY ALLEN ESKENS

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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First ebook edition: September 2022

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ISBN 9-780-316-70352-9

E3-20220713-JV-NF-ORI

I dedicate this book to the memory of Calvin P. Johnson, a mentor, a sage, and a true friend. You are missed.

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CHAPTER 1

Max Rupert laced his fingers behind his head and settled into his pillow to await the ghosts. He knew that Mikhail Vetrov would be lurking on the other side of sleep. It had been three and a half years since he had shoved Mikhail through that hole in the ice, and very few nights had gone by where the memory of that killing didn’t come to visit him.

In dreams, Max still had the short hair and clean-shaven face of a homicide detective, but that face was long gone. Max hadn’t shaved or cut his hair since the day he started his exile, so now his beard reached to his chest and his hair fell in a ponytail between his shoulder blades. Living alone in the woods, Max found that unkempt look fitting.

But there were other changes that didn’t sit so well with Max. His eyes seemed empty, and his cheeks had grown thin. At forty-five years old he felt too young for the tiny lines that now fanned out from his eyes and creased the edges of his mouth. And his features seemed to sag a touch, as though something inside of him, something dark and heavy, weighed him down with years that he had not yet lived.

But those parts of Max that he’d hoped might change as the years went by—his heart, his conscience—clung stubbornly to the past. He had shut himself away from the world to face his reckoning, willing to accept forgiveness or retribution in equal measure, but after three and a half years, he had found neither. His reclamation had become stagnant.