The Dark Arts

From New York Times bestselling author Kevin Maurer, The Dark Arts is a relentless thriller about a retired SEAL who discovers the mysterious woman who shadowed his most dangerous missions is now recruiting him on behalf of a secret organization.

Navy SEAL commander Jake Lincoln built his career on missions that should have failed but didn’t. A defector extraction on the North Korean coast. A raid in Somalia. Each time, the same unexplained presence: a woman who appeared in no op order and no intel brief—and was gone before the shooting stopped.

When Lincoln retired, the mystery followed him home. He worked what little trail she’d left—a half-glimpsed face, a rumor traded among old teammates—and got nowhere. Because she was never his to find. She had been watching him for years. And the invitation, when it finally came, was hers: join the Gambit Group.

Gambit is the private intelligence firm the world’s powerful call when the rules won’t get it done—espionage, sabotage, wet work, the trade’s dark arts. Its founder is Richard Lawrence, a Cold War legend running out of time and settling his accounts. Its finest weapon is Raven, the ghost from Lincoln’s missions, an assassin who has spent her life winning other people’s wars—and who hand-picked Lincoln to fight beside her.

His first operation lands in the African nation of Zambutu, where Pressley Touray-Fletcher—a hedge-fund heiress turned humanitarian—has vanished from the orphanage she’s building near a cobalt mine. Her kidnapping is a move in a larger game: a Russian oligarch with old KGB blood on his hands wants the mine, and his enforcer, Strelnikov, is hunting anyone in his way.

But nothing about this mission is what it seems. Its roots run back to a betrayal in Cold War Moscow, and its endgame will either destroy the Gambit Group or transform it forever. To survive, Lincoln must finally learn the truth about the woman who saved him so many times—and repay the debt in blood.