Malevolent Intent: A Lee Danforth Suspense Novel

After a disastrous fourth tour overseas, Army Colonel Vernon Matheson is thrust into civilian life with a forced medical retirement and a fractured mind. Hoping to rebuild, he returns to Charleston—only to walk into a nightmare: his house trashed, a dead woman on his bedroom floor, and his wife and five-year-old daughter gone without a trace.

Instead of allies, Vern finds resistance at every turn. His once-steady grandparents are evasive and erratic, the lead investigator seems determined to frame him, and time is bleeding away with every false lead. Into the chaos steps Lee Danforth—a sharp, relentless attorney assigned to his case, and the last person Vern wants digging through his shattered life. But as their alliance deepens, so does the danger.

As Lee Danforth and Vern Matheson dig deeper into Angela Matheson’s double life and trail of drugs, secrets, and betrayal, they uncover something far darker: a calculating killer who has been stalking this family for months, orchestrating every piece of their destruction. With a hurricane bearing down on the South Carolina coast, Vern and Lee must race to find his daughter, Katie, before the storm—and the man hunting them—brings everything crashing down.

Because the deeper they dig, the deadlier the truth becomes.