Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Release Date: January 28, 2025
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller, Suspense
Dez Limerick, a man of many skills and a murky past, faces the impossible, skilled, deadly opponent who anticipates his every move.
Dez is inventive with a sense of humor that comes out in his craft. He is fast on the uptake and brilliant in how his mind works. Byrne's two female characters are both badass. Cat is a top-of-the-line thief who always gets what she wants. She helps Dez with her own very different skill set. I do hope they align together again in the future because they make a great team. Olivia, aka Liv, is a former colleague of Dez’s and also a superb gatekeeper, but her goals in life are completely opposite those of Dez. She’s a great opponent and I don't see how Byrne can just walk away without yet another confrontation.
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Desmond Aloysius Limerick ("Dez" to his friends and close personal enemies) is a man with a shadowy past, certain useful hard-won skills, and, if one digs deep enough, a reputation as a good man to have at your back. He was trained as a "gatekeeper"—he can open any door, keep it open as long as necessary, and control who does—and does not—go through. Now retired from his previous life, Dez still tries to keep his skills current.
Knocking around the country, picking up the occasional gig as a guitarist, Dez is contacted by a friend who urgently needs his musical skills. At his behest, Dez flies to the East Coast to a gig at the new massive complex, the Liberty Center. But he's barely landed before he finds himself in the midst of a terrorist attack; a group has taken over the whole center, and thousands of hostage lives are in danger. With the semi-willing help of a talented thief, Dez takes on the impossible task of outfighting and outwitting a literal army. But that's just the beginning, as Dez learns he was actually lured there under false pretenses by someone who knows more about Dez, his past, and his skills than any living person should.
Chain Reaction is the Third installment in author James Byrne's Dez Limerick series. The story opens 18 months ago, with Dez in Madrid, Spain, with a man named Jamison. He is there to meet with an alleged Professor and his assistant for a formula that would be revolutionary, but it turns out to be a scam. Dez is trained as a gatekeeper capable of opening any door, keeping it open as long as necessary, and controlling who does and doesn’t go through it. Though retired, he keeps his skills up to date.
It is here that he meets Catalina Valdivia, who will be a key to the events that will happen after Dez is lured to Newark, where he will allegedly play with a band he knows well. When he is texted by a friend needing his musical skills, Dez flies to New Jersey for the gig at the new opening of the Liberty Center. He’s barely there when the complex is taken over by an armed militia, and thousands of hostages are in danger. When the event is taken over by Russian terrorists, he cannot help but think that his arrival here was planned by someone.
Dez solicits the aid of a Cat, a master thief, and with her aid and his wit and unique skills, they rush headfirst into the impossible task of defeating, or at the least waylaying, an army. A puzzling chain of events occurs in the days following the attack that don't add up, and being a numbers guy, Dez's seriously disturbed when two plus two doesn't equal four. Evidence indicates Dez and others were lured to the convention center under false pretenses by someone as highly skilled as he is, but Dez only knew one person who fit the criteria, and she's dead. Isn't she?
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CHAPTER 1
YESTERDAY
Dez is breaking fast at a little diner in Portland, Oregon, when a text lights up his phone.
Disaster! Big big big show Tuesday! In Newark. Bassist has covid. BEGGING for your help. KJack
Dez grins around a mouthful of bangers and scrambled eggs. It’s Monday, and he’s a continent away from New Jersey.
He’s only been retired and living in the States since the start of the year and spent some of that time in Los Angeles, picking up musical gigs where he could as a bass player and pianist. He did a couple three shows backing up vocalist Jack O’Herlihy and his band, Kansas Jack and the Blacktop. The band—bigger than most, with keyboards, strings, percussion, and a horn section—covers a lot of classic rock ’n’ roll from the fifties and sixties, focusing on rockabilly standards. The band is fun and the sound is a bit outside Dez’s wheelhouse, especially when he’s asked to provide background vocals. It makes for a decent challenge. He quite enjoyed those gigs.
He also has nothing else on his schedule. He gulps down some coffee and responds.
Set me up with place to stay, I’m in.
By the time Dez is paying the bill, his phone chirps again.
Could kiss you!
Dez types back:
Please don’t.
* * *
Dez, at thirty-five, owns few things. He travels with a Vietnam-era army surplus duffel bag for his clothes, which includes a lot of black T-shirts he has to buy online to get them big enough for his chest, neck, and pecs; a black jacket; black jeans; underwear; and lace-up boots. He also has a Gibson Ripper bass guitar; plus a tablet computer that’s a bit larger and bulkier than most, and a mobile phone that is the same.
Dez designed some of the aftermarket additions to the tablet and phone.
He checks his luggage—there are two knives buried in the bottom of the duffel. He carries on only a banged-up leather messenger bag. He buys a paperback to read on the plane. He gets to talking to the retired middle school teacher seated next to him and they’re fast friends before the plane leaves the Rockies in its wake.
En route, Dez checks Jack O’Herlihy’s website. Kansas Jack and the Blacktop are performing on Tuesday at some big, new convention center adjacent to Newark Liberty International Airport. And he’s already updated his promotional site by adding Dez to the band lineup. That was quick.
This week appears to be one enormous grand opening of the center, which includes a flash new hotel, and a spacious convention space, and restaurants, and play areas for the kiddies, and whatnot. Dez gets the desperation in his mate’s text now. This could be a really big event for a band that occasionally turns a profit, mostly via its merch, but more often than not just breaks even.
Jack’s band is opening for …
Dez’s jaw drops.
Unbelievable. They’re one of four opening acts for Calvin Willow. A rock legend from the 1980s and ’90s and, as some would have you believe, one of the three or four best guitarists in the history of rock.
Dez has owned nearly every album Calvin Willow ever recorded, either as the headliner for his band or his solo works. Dez has memorized and covered a wide array of his hits. In the military, if a Calvin Willow song came on Spotify, well over half the men in Dez’s unit could sing the lyrics.
The man’s a right legend.
* * *
As his plane lands, Dez texts Jack and they agree to meet for dinner in Newark, and to go over the playlist.
Got you a room at The Liberty Suites, Jack texts.
In the Newark airport’s domestic terminal, Dez spots signage for the light-rail to the brand-new, spiffy Liberty Convention Center. Known simply as The Liberty. And below the fancy logo, he reads A FLAG FAMILY EXPERIENCE!
He buys a ticket and hops on the light-rail train that looks like Santa has set under the tree and some good boys and girls have just opened the box. It doesn’t even feature any graffiti yet, and the car floor is as clean as Sister Yolanda’s secondary level classroom.
The train stops at a fancy new terminal inside The Liberty. The place feels like the set of a science fiction movie. Everything is glass and steel and very vertical. It’s all under one way-high glass roof. It offers 2.2 million square feet of exhibition space with a ten-acre footprint. Dez’s brain isn’t wired to understand the vastness of this convention center. He thought it contained a hotel. Nope. It contains three of them. Five-star, three-star, and a no-frills knockoff brand. That’s the one Dez is staying at, naturally.
He has a bit of ready cash. He gets to The Liberty Suites and its new but low-key lobby and changes the credit card from Jack’s to his own. Only fair, despite their deal. Jack O’Herlihy will go without food to help out a bandmate. Dez has seen him do it.
He scopes out his room. Nice enough. Small but clean. A double bed. Well, Dez is only five-eight, so a longer bed seems like a waste of linen. The view is of the inside of the conference center.
He leaves his duffel and guitar in the room, throws his tablet computer and his folding Raptor knife, with its nylon sheath, in his messenger bag, and goes walking. He’d like to check out the venue for Tuesday’s show, if he can get in.
There are little, amoeba-shaped parks with sculpted trees, randomly placed. The pathways are brick and gold in tone, à la Oz, and none of the paths travel in a straight line. He sees a big exhibition space, next to a really big exhibition space, next to a gargantuan exhibition space. He spots restaurants, including Asian cuisine, Latin American cuisine, French and Italian cuisine, and an O’Malley Burgers, those near-ubiquitous fast-food restaurants all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. It’s laid out cheek by jowl next to a grand restaurant owned by a famed chef with a constellation of Michelin stars.
There must be well over a thousand people bobbing about, Dez thinks. There’s a comic book convention in one of the spaces, and he spots several kids and families in cosplay. Many people are wearing business attire, so obviously professional associations are gathering here already, although the place has barely opened.
Dez also has spotted two men with a military mien and no smiles, and he quickly takes a knee, his back to them, tying his boots.
His hackles have just risen. Dez was so preoccupied playing tourist, he’s only now aware that the pair he just passed aren’t the first soldier types he’s seen.
They’re the third pair.
He wants to smack himself for missing the obvious.
The men aren’t wearing uniforms, and someone who hasn’t done what Dez has done for most of his adult life wouldn’t recognize them for what they are. They wear dark trousers of stiff, tough canvas and lace-up boots like Dez’s. They wear dark, thick sweaters under long coats. That alone should have set Dez’s alarms blaring.
Such sweaters are ideal for disguising ballistic vests. And ballistic vests tend to bind under the arms and across the chest. Men wearing them sometimes subconsciously grab the tops of their vests and pull downward to relieve the binding sensation. Dez spots a guy do precisely that.
Those long coats also would hide belt holsters and guns just fine.
They’re well-built guys. All men, so far. Caucasian.
Equally important, the men are as serious as a snakebite. Glowering looks. Hard eyes taking in their surroundings. Moving with intent and with purpose.
Two more such men pass Dez and, kneeling, he casually glances at their hands.
They have the same calluses on the web between their thumbs and forefingers that Dez has. You can only get those calluses after hours upon hours on firing ranges.
Could be these are the good guys. Could be there was a security threat, and the New Jersey National Guard or whatever is out in force to keep the peace. This could all be a heaping great bowl of nothing.
But it just doesn’t feel that way.
Dez was making his way to the Delphi Insurance Center, the venue for Tuesday’s concert. He takes a seat on a bench under a manicured oak tree in a postage-stamp garden. He picked up a convention center brochure with a map in the hotel lobby and pretends to read it.
He spots another duo of soldier-types. That makes ten guys so far. Ten guys heading every which way; not toward any one destination.
He checks the center’s website on his phone. There are no military-style events planned at any of the exhibition halls.
“As I live and breathe.”
Dez hears the voice and glances up. A stunner of a woman smiles down at him. She’s his age, Latina, with night-black hair cascading to the middle of her back. She’s wearing a cropped white tank under a red leather bomber. That and matchstick jeans do a most admirable job of showing off her curves. She’s playing the ensemble high-low by pairing it with diamond stud earrings, plus Keds.
Dez has other things on his mind, but knockouts don’t just chat up a lad every day of the week. Dez puts away his brochure. “Help ye?”
She smiles. And waits.
Dez smiles and also waits.
She squints at him, turns her head a bit. She has a cleft chin. Dez is a little bit nuts about girls with cleft chins. She has high cheekbones and deep brown eyes that suggest a sense of humor and a sense of her own beauty.
The waiting goes on.
Dez rises.
“Dez. Pleased. Have we met?”
“We have.” She slow-rolls it, the knowing smile in place.
“Then I’m an absolute idiot for not recognizin’ you, ma’am. I’m also losing me mind in me old age, clearly, and need t’be put down for my own good. An’ you are…?”
“What I’m not is a translator helping a kindly old professor to sell the formula for café con leche to the British government for three-point-are-you-fucking-kidding-me pounds.” She bats her eyes. “Sterling.”
“Cat!”
Now the smile grows.
“Jay-sus, but I didn’t recognize you out of that meek librarian getup you was wearing! What’s it been? Year an’ a half?”
“Close enough,” she says. “And it was a meek lab assistant getup. I worked hard on that. I tried on thirty glasses before I found exactly the least attractive pair.”
Dez offers his hand. She ignores it.
“C’mon. I’m buying you a drink. I have some questions to ask you.”
Dez spots two more of the soldier-types. “Now wouldn’t be the worst of times to get a drink, I’m thinking. And sharpish, if ye’ve a mind.”
CHAPTER 2
They find a martini bar with some chef’s famous name on the door and about seven trillion variations of booze. Dez spots some vodka flavors that one normally finds only in a box of kiddies’ cereal, and his stomach roils a bit.
The woman he knows only as Cat picks a table far from everyone else and the waiter lands on them as if he’d been dropped from a helicopter. There’s a benefit to getting a drink with a lustrous bird like this one, Dez thinks.
They order drinks. “I have, like, a million questions for you,” she says.
He extends his hand. “Desmond Limerick.”
She studies him a moment. She chews her lower lip when she’s contemplating. Finally, she reaches across and shakes.
“Catalina Valdivia. And that’s the third time I’ve said my full name aloud to anyone in a decade.”
“Hence Cat.”
“That’s right.”
“Pleased. I’ve a question of me own, but you should go first.”
Their drinks arrive: an old-fashioned for her, a Rob Roy for him.
She leans in over their small, round table, to keep her voice down. “You could have had me arrested that night.”
YESTERDAY
Dez is breaking fast at a little diner in Portland, Oregon, when a text lights up his phone.
Disaster! Big big big show Tuesday! In Newark. Bassist has covid. BEGGING for your help. KJack
Dez grins around a mouthful of bangers and scrambled eggs. It’s Monday, and he’s a continent away from New Jersey.
He’s only been retired and living in the States since the start of the year and spent some of that time in Los Angeles, picking up musical gigs where he could as a bass player and pianist. He did a couple three shows backing up vocalist Jack O’Herlihy and his band, Kansas Jack and the Blacktop. The band—bigger than most, with keyboards, strings, percussion, and a horn section—covers a lot of classic rock ’n’ roll from the fifties and sixties, focusing on rockabilly standards. The band is fun and the sound is a bit outside Dez’s wheelhouse, especially when he’s asked to provide background vocals. It makes for a decent challenge. He quite enjoyed those gigs.
He also has nothing else on his schedule. He gulps down some coffee and responds.
Set me up with place to stay, I’m in.
By the time Dez is paying the bill, his phone chirps again.
Could kiss you!
Dez types back:
Please don’t.
* * *
Dez, at thirty-five, owns few things. He travels with a Vietnam-era army surplus duffel bag for his clothes, which includes a lot of black T-shirts he has to buy online to get them big enough for his chest, neck, and pecs; a black jacket; black jeans; underwear; and lace-up boots. He also has a Gibson Ripper bass guitar; plus a tablet computer that’s a bit larger and bulkier than most, and a mobile phone that is the same.
Dez designed some of the aftermarket additions to the tablet and phone.
He checks his luggage—there are two knives buried in the bottom of the duffel. He carries on only a banged-up leather messenger bag. He buys a paperback to read on the plane. He gets to talking to the retired middle school teacher seated next to him and they’re fast friends before the plane leaves the Rockies in its wake.
En route, Dez checks Jack O’Herlihy’s website. Kansas Jack and the Blacktop are performing on Tuesday at some big, new convention center adjacent to Newark Liberty International Airport. And he’s already updated his promotional site by adding Dez to the band lineup. That was quick.
This week appears to be one enormous grand opening of the center, which includes a flash new hotel, and a spacious convention space, and restaurants, and play areas for the kiddies, and whatnot. Dez gets the desperation in his mate’s text now. This could be a really big event for a band that occasionally turns a profit, mostly via its merch, but more often than not just breaks even.
Jack’s band is opening for …
Dez’s jaw drops.
Unbelievable. They’re one of four opening acts for Calvin Willow. A rock legend from the 1980s and ’90s and, as some would have you believe, one of the three or four best guitarists in the history of rock.
Dez has owned nearly every album Calvin Willow ever recorded, either as the headliner for his band or his solo works. Dez has memorized and covered a wide array of his hits. In the military, if a Calvin Willow song came on Spotify, well over half the men in Dez’s unit could sing the lyrics.
The man’s a right legend.
* * *
As his plane lands, Dez texts Jack and they agree to meet for dinner in Newark, and to go over the playlist.
Got you a room at The Liberty Suites, Jack texts.
In the Newark airport’s domestic terminal, Dez spots signage for the light-rail to the brand-new, spiffy Liberty Convention Center. Known simply as The Liberty. And below the fancy logo, he reads A FLAG FAMILY EXPERIENCE!
He buys a ticket and hops on the light-rail train that looks like Santa has set under the tree and some good boys and girls have just opened the box. It doesn’t even feature any graffiti yet, and the car floor is as clean as Sister Yolanda’s secondary level classroom.
The train stops at a fancy new terminal inside The Liberty. The place feels like the set of a science fiction movie. Everything is glass and steel and very vertical. It’s all under one way-high glass roof. It offers 2.2 million square feet of exhibition space with a ten-acre footprint. Dez’s brain isn’t wired to understand the vastness of this convention center. He thought it contained a hotel. Nope. It contains three of them. Five-star, three-star, and a no-frills knockoff brand. That’s the one Dez is staying at, naturally.
He has a bit of ready cash. He gets to The Liberty Suites and its new but low-key lobby and changes the credit card from Jack’s to his own. Only fair, despite their deal. Jack O’Herlihy will go without food to help out a bandmate. Dez has seen him do it.
He scopes out his room. Nice enough. Small but clean. A double bed. Well, Dez is only five-eight, so a longer bed seems like a waste of linen. The view is of the inside of the conference center.
He leaves his duffel and guitar in the room, throws his tablet computer and his folding Raptor knife, with its nylon sheath, in his messenger bag, and goes walking. He’d like to check out the venue for Tuesday’s show, if he can get in.
There are little, amoeba-shaped parks with sculpted trees, randomly placed. The pathways are brick and gold in tone, à la Oz, and none of the paths travel in a straight line. He sees a big exhibition space, next to a really big exhibition space, next to a gargantuan exhibition space. He spots restaurants, including Asian cuisine, Latin American cuisine, French and Italian cuisine, and an O’Malley Burgers, those near-ubiquitous fast-food restaurants all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. It’s laid out cheek by jowl next to a grand restaurant owned by a famed chef with a constellation of Michelin stars.
There must be well over a thousand people bobbing about, Dez thinks. There’s a comic book convention in one of the spaces, and he spots several kids and families in cosplay. Many people are wearing business attire, so obviously professional associations are gathering here already, although the place has barely opened.
Dez also has spotted two men with a military mien and no smiles, and he quickly takes a knee, his back to them, tying his boots.
His hackles have just risen. Dez was so preoccupied playing tourist, he’s only now aware that the pair he just passed aren’t the first soldier types he’s seen.
They’re the third pair.
He wants to smack himself for missing the obvious.
The men aren’t wearing uniforms, and someone who hasn’t done what Dez has done for most of his adult life wouldn’t recognize them for what they are. They wear dark trousers of stiff, tough canvas and lace-up boots like Dez’s. They wear dark, thick sweaters under long coats. That alone should have set Dez’s alarms blaring.
Such sweaters are ideal for disguising ballistic vests. And ballistic vests tend to bind under the arms and across the chest. Men wearing them sometimes subconsciously grab the tops of their vests and pull downward to relieve the binding sensation. Dez spots a guy do precisely that.
Those long coats also would hide belt holsters and guns just fine.
They’re well-built guys. All men, so far. Caucasian.
Equally important, the men are as serious as a snakebite. Glowering looks. Hard eyes taking in their surroundings. Moving with intent and with purpose.
Two more such men pass Dez and, kneeling, he casually glances at their hands.
They have the same calluses on the web between their thumbs and forefingers that Dez has. You can only get those calluses after hours upon hours on firing ranges.
Could be these are the good guys. Could be there was a security threat, and the New Jersey National Guard or whatever is out in force to keep the peace. This could all be a heaping great bowl of nothing.
But it just doesn’t feel that way.
Dez was making his way to the Delphi Insurance Center, the venue for Tuesday’s concert. He takes a seat on a bench under a manicured oak tree in a postage-stamp garden. He picked up a convention center brochure with a map in the hotel lobby and pretends to read it.
He spots another duo of soldier-types. That makes ten guys so far. Ten guys heading every which way; not toward any one destination.
He checks the center’s website on his phone. There are no military-style events planned at any of the exhibition halls.
“As I live and breathe.”
Dez hears the voice and glances up. A stunner of a woman smiles down at him. She’s his age, Latina, with night-black hair cascading to the middle of her back. She’s wearing a cropped white tank under a red leather bomber. That and matchstick jeans do a most admirable job of showing off her curves. She’s playing the ensemble high-low by pairing it with diamond stud earrings, plus Keds.
Dez has other things on his mind, but knockouts don’t just chat up a lad every day of the week. Dez puts away his brochure. “Help ye?”
She smiles. And waits.
Dez smiles and also waits.
She squints at him, turns her head a bit. She has a cleft chin. Dez is a little bit nuts about girls with cleft chins. She has high cheekbones and deep brown eyes that suggest a sense of humor and a sense of her own beauty.
The waiting goes on.
Dez rises.
“Dez. Pleased. Have we met?”
“We have.” She slow-rolls it, the knowing smile in place.
“Then I’m an absolute idiot for not recognizin’ you, ma’am. I’m also losing me mind in me old age, clearly, and need t’be put down for my own good. An’ you are…?”
“What I’m not is a translator helping a kindly old professor to sell the formula for café con leche to the British government for three-point-are-you-fucking-kidding-me pounds.” She bats her eyes. “Sterling.”
“Cat!”
Now the smile grows.
“Jay-sus, but I didn’t recognize you out of that meek librarian getup you was wearing! What’s it been? Year an’ a half?”
“Close enough,” she says. “And it was a meek lab assistant getup. I worked hard on that. I tried on thirty glasses before I found exactly the least attractive pair.”
Dez offers his hand. She ignores it.
“C’mon. I’m buying you a drink. I have some questions to ask you.”
Dez spots two more of the soldier-types. “Now wouldn’t be the worst of times to get a drink, I’m thinking. And sharpish, if ye’ve a mind.”
CHAPTER 2
They find a martini bar with some chef’s famous name on the door and about seven trillion variations of booze. Dez spots some vodka flavors that one normally finds only in a box of kiddies’ cereal, and his stomach roils a bit.
The woman he knows only as Cat picks a table far from everyone else and the waiter lands on them as if he’d been dropped from a helicopter. There’s a benefit to getting a drink with a lustrous bird like this one, Dez thinks.
They order drinks. “I have, like, a million questions for you,” she says.
He extends his hand. “Desmond Limerick.”
She studies him a moment. She chews her lower lip when she’s contemplating. Finally, she reaches across and shakes.
“Catalina Valdivia. And that’s the third time I’ve said my full name aloud to anyone in a decade.”
“Hence Cat.”
“That’s right.”
“Pleased. I’ve a question of me own, but you should go first.”
Their drinks arrive: an old-fashioned for her, a Rob Roy for him.
She leans in over their small, round table, to keep her voice down. “You could have had me arrested that night.”
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