The Shepherd's Lie

When undercover agent Evan Cross infiltrates the apocalyptic Last Mercy Fellowship, he expects to find a charismatic fraud. Instead, he finds a family—and a death sentence. As the cult's leader, Jonathan Shepherd, prepares a mass “baptism” by fire, Cross must navigate a world where every whispered prayer is a coded threat and every confession could be his last. The lies he tells to survive become the only shield between dozens of innocent lives and a fiery grave. Months after the sanctuary crumbles, a landmark civil suit—Verity v. Shepherd et al.—drags Cross from the shadows and onto the witness stand. There, the truth he once risked his life to expose becomes the one thing that could destroy him. In the tradition of Michael Koryta’s morally complex thrillers, this is a story where the boundary between savior and sinner is drenched in smoke, and the only escape is to burn away the past.