The nation’s capital is on lockdown.
 
Senators are being hunted—specifically the ones from red states. Their politics are polarizing, but their executions are surgical. Some call it justice. Others call it war.
 
Blade Raines doesn’t care what they call it. He just knows it’s about to get worse.
 
He’s called in off-book. No badge. No oversight. Just a black folder, a burner phone, and one directive: shut it down before the country tears itself in two.
 
Blade builds a new team.
 
Xiomara Ballesteros—a former homicide detective fired for excessive force and racial bias. She’s got blood on her badge and a chip on her shoulder.
James North—a retired U.S. Marshal, half White, half Korean, with ghosts of wars he didn’t fight but still carries.
They’re both compromised. And that’s exactly what Blade needs—operatives the government can’t control.
 
But this case cuts deeper than bullets and bodies.
 
Years ago, Blade helped dismantle radical Black organizations under the guise of counterterrorism. He thought he was protecting lives. What he was really doing was burying voices.
 
And now, one of the men he arrested—Alexandro Freedman, once known on the streets as “Kill Em While They Sleep”—a former soldier turned radical, now a rising politician with a loyal base and a rebranded image, is being implicated in the assassinations.
 
He’s vanished. Gone underground.
 
Blade doesn’t know if he’s guilty.
But he knows what guilt feels like.
 
This isn’t just about stopping a killer.
It’s about confronting the machine he once helped feed.
And the betrayal he never made peace with—not just of the man now in hiding, but of a community.
Of a movement.
 
New city. New team. New rules.
Red Dogs off the leash.