Alpha and Omega — Robert Gallant

Beautiful environmental graduate student Chesney Barrett previously helped clandestine government agent Travis Weld locate and destroy a drug operation in the Louisiana swamps. Her ability to decipher clues that lead to complex criminal plots, and maneuver her way through dangerous confrontations led Weld to use her again to help track down the owner of a Russian suitcase-sized nuclear bomb and again to locate the scientist offering to sell a deadly new virus.

Chesney is now utilizing her swimming expertise to help the forestry service gather environmental samples from the rivers in the Smoky Mountain National Park. When she finds a dead man obviously killed by a large animal, she hustles downstream to retrieve her boat so she can take the body into the Forestry Service Center. But when she returns, the body is gone. The tracks indicate animals that are not normally in these forests have taken the body and someone is with the animals. None of this makes sense. Who is the dead man? Who is the person who somehow controls the animals? What are they doing in this forest? Trying to answer these questions plunges Chesney into a deadly confrontation that rapidly escalates into a battle for who will control a unique new weapon. This time, it is Chesney who will ask Travis Weld for help.