BRANSON'S COUNTRY by Janette Anderson (paperback)
His career was founded on hitting the bad guys so hard they’d beg to be arrested just to get away from him. Now, the era of shoot-first/talk-later police ethics is over, and no one feels more tested by the new rules than the Australian Federal Police Force’s most decorated hero, Kane Branson.
One year ago, five men brutally raped and murdered Kane’s wife, and although the AFP knows the men, they avoided prosecution for lack of evidence. Kane does his best to abide by the legal process, but he becomes totally frustrated by the law’s inability to bring the men to justice, and finally takes the law into his own hands.
Kane blows one of the men, Pierce, to pieces and all hell breaks loose. Warned by his superior, Captain Buchanan, that he’ll be imprisoned if he continues on a personal quest for vengeance, Buchanan also warns him not to dig too deep, as he might not like what he discovers.
If he absolutely must go after the men, though, Buchanan offers him another way. If Kane can acquire enough evidence on the rest of the men, Walker, Stevens, King, and millionaire Miles Stratton, for the drug distribution operation they’re suspected of running, the AFP will prosecute them… but good.
The catch is, Kane has to do it on his own time to avoid a judicial outcry of conflict of interest, and he has to do it as non-violently as possible.
Kane begins his pursuit by agreeing to protect the daughter of one of the men, Kelly Walker, on her trip back home to visit her father. She’s agreed to testify against him and his cronies when she’s sure that she’s protected from their retribution…that is, after they’re behind bars. Kane connects with a visiting US Marshall, Justice Department Agent Reese Wade, the daughter of an old friend sent to help find and arrest the American member, millionaire Miles Stratton.
Kane and Kelly make contact, and Walker, smelling a rat, takes them to his jungle compound, the hub of his drug-distribution operation. Kane discovers that Walker, with the help of his goons, runs a white-slave scam there, preying on homeless young girls living on the streets.
Kane’s own daughter, Sage, left home two years before and hasn’t contacted him since. When Kane penetrates Walker’s operation with the help of Kelly, he discovers his daughter living in Walker’s jungle hideaway, a virtual prisoner. Kane now has to not only gather evidence against Walker, he has to get the three of them safely away from Walker’s grasp and keep them all alive in the process, an effort made more complicated as he and Kelly realize that they’re falling in love.
Reese Wade is ‘killed’ and Miles Stratton escapes, and although Kane takes revenge on Walker, King and Stevens, he cannot rest until his personal quest is fulfilled and Miles Stratton is brought to justice.
Finally, Buchanan’s warning that Kane might discover more than he wants to know becomes prophetic, and Kane has to choose between the darkness of the man he used to be, or the light of a new and uncharted future as a father, a husband to a woman his daughter’s age, and as an Australian Federal Police Officer.