Blood Stripe - Gina Maria DiNicolo

It is the first spring of the new millennium. Susanna Marcasi prowls Washington, D.C., looking for lost love. Thoughts of her brutal New Orleans youth haunt her. She suffers physical and mental anguish stemming from a so-called “accident” of which she has no memory and believes something more occurred.

The banished Marine Corps officer receives a surprise 3 a.m. call. She meets estranged Lori O’Reilly. Susanna senses an opportunity for redemption and truth and agrees to unravel the apparent suicide of Lori’s lover, Joe Earhardt

While stringing at a White House ceremony, Susanna surprises Naval Academy classmate Mike Singleton. The carnage from a bitter lovers’ struggle has kept the couple apart until now. Singleton, on a special tour with the Defense Intelligence Agency, hunts Earhardt for suspicious liaisons.

Susanna finders herself toe-to-toe with Manfred Stahl, a man to whom all are beholden and whom a cowering president has crowned defense secretary. Stahl’s unabashed lust for power and emotional instability are eclipsed only by his vile and vindictive nature. She waged war with the senator and Marine War hero on the Hill, but feels their relationship may transcend Washington. She has learned the powerful have secrets and Stahl has his share. Susanna has worked to decipher the disappearance of billions targeted for New Orleans’ aging levees. Her spot-on funding query enrages the new cabinet secretary-cum-clandestine paramilitary broker, sending the two on the deadly collision course they shared a lifetime earlier.