The Afterline Bureau: The Broken Map (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798275783643)

Some trees grow leaves.
Others grow children.
This one grows missing ones.

When a young boy disappears into the woods and a new symbol is found carved deep into the trees, the Afterline Bureau is pulled into its most disturbing case yet. Commanders D.C. Carter and Tahlia Greene lead their fractured team into a labyrinth of hidden routes, forgotten hubs, and a network so vast it makes the Harvest Line look like a single branch.

The Bureau discovers a terrifying truth:
the child wasn't taken at random - he was selected.

As Bria, Cassian, and Vaughn hunt predators through backwoods corridors and abandoned freight tunnels, Dr. Sembene unravels a pattern beneath the abductions-an intelligence shaping children into something they were never meant to be. And in the shadows, a new figure emerges:

The Collector.
The man behind the roots.
The man extending the trunk.

With new recruits Kendra Sawyer, Dr. Adama Sembene, Liyah Okafor, and Vaughn Mercer, the Bureau closes in on a hidden agricultural research facility where children are cataloged like specimens... and stripped of their identities one answer at a time.

But the Collector is always one step ahead.

When the Bureau finally discovers the "Trunk Hub," the team is pushed past breaking point. Lives are shattered. Lines are crossed. And as the facility burns behind them, a new symbol appears carved into a canyon wall-massive, deliberate, and unmistakably fresh.

The Collector is expanding.
The roots are spreading.
And the map keeps growing.

The war for the stolen children has only begun.

Perfect for readers of dark crime thrillers, psychological suspense, and relentless investigative horror, The Broken Map reaches deeper into the Afterline Bureau than ever before... and what it finds there might be even darker than the roots themselves.