The Cost of It: The Ethan Caldwell Stories - Book Two (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798993538020)

Ethan Caldwell thought he'd left Iraq behind-the firefights, the moral compromises, the weight of decisions made in the fog. Seven years practicing estate law in South Carolina. Seven years of quiet.

Then his phone rings at 2:47 AM.

Yousef al-Tikriti, the interpreter who fell in a sewage ditch outside Baqubah and kept translating, is trapped in Kurdistan. A CIA officer named David Chen won't let him leave until he completes one more mission. Chen recruited Yousef four years ago using Ethan's letters of recommendation. Now he needs Ethan to help finish what they started.

In Erbil, Ethan discovers a world where American intelligence agencies run competing operations without coordination. Where a Kurdish intelligence officer manipulates everyone. Where Iranian operatives are planning something that will cost lives. The calculations are impossible. The fog never clears.

When an eleven-year-old girl is kidnapped, Ethan must choose: compromise an active investigation to save her, or accept that some costs are too high to pay.

From Kurdistan's checkpoints to Brooklyn's safe houses, The Cost of It explores what we owe the people we can't leave behind-and whether doing slightly more good than harm is enough.

Book Two in The Ethan Caldwell Stories.