Rent Blind Fall

Synopsis

John Houck joined the Marine Corps to find honor and escape the painful childhood trauma that tore his family apart. As a member of the Marine Corps elite First Recon division, he was trained to slip far behind enemy lines and kill with his bare hands. But his career ended because of a split-second failure on the streets of Ai Ramadi, a failure that caused his beloved captain, Mike Bowers, to risk his own life to save John's.

Now, haunted by memories of war and the secret of his own personal disgrace, John is eking out a living working construction jobs in California's Inland Empire when he is presented with an opportunity to redeem himself to his old captain, now living in seclusion in an isolated mountain town.

But as soon as John shows up on the doorstep of his comrade's cabin, he discovers that Mike Bowers has been savagely murdered. When he sees a man running from the scene of the crime, John pursues him into the dark woods, convinced the man is the killer.

But Alex Martin is not the killer. In fact, a wall of photographs inside the cabin reveals that Alex was Mike Bowers' lover, a fact that shocks John almost as much as his close friend's murder. But now the body is gone, the crime scene has been wiped clean and John is arrested for breaking and entering by a sheriff who seems entirely too eager to let John go and frame Alex for the murder. John feels no choice but to transfer his indebtedness from Bowers to the male lover he never knew Bowers had, even as Alex's sexuality raises painful memories of John's younger brother, who never recovered from being the victim of a neighborhood child molester when they were young.

When Alex refuses to go the authorities, sensing a conspiracy involving law enforcement, John is left with no choice but to train the young man how to defend himself with the skills John spent years perfecting. IIt's a dangerous bargain that forces John to seek aid from his estranged sister, confront his own homophobia and face the truth about his younger brother's suicide.

Blind Fall is a departure for Christopher Rice: the story of two men, one a Marine, one gay, who must unite to avenge the death of the man they both loved--one as a lover, one as a brother-in-arms--and to survive.

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