Gold and Courage

When a confidential informant skips town and leaves the keys to his thriving Miami tattoo business behind, Vance Courage and his girlfriend Lauren Gold realize they've waltzed into a fresh opportunity to launder a couple of million dirty dollars. With a little rebranding, it's the perfect front; all they need to make it look legit is a tattoo artist. Enter Armani Altman, a talented tattooist with a big social media presence. But things go sideways when their dog Cashmere discovers a rotting human torso in the alley behind Ink Hollow. Vance and Lauren can't afford to get mired in an investigation that's sure to be a sensational media story, and as an ex-detective, Vance knows how to make evidence disappear. One quick nighttime dumpster drop - and poof - the problem will be gone. Except morning comes, and the torso is back - propped against the rear door - setting off a chain reaction with more body parts planted for them to find. As Gold and Courage struggle to solve the puzzle and save the business, they soon realize they are in the bullseye of a methodical killer.

A kidnapping draws a former lawyer turned money launderer into a curious plot to overthrow the Cuban government. Vance Courage has sworn off life as a lawyer and is living comfortably off the millions of dirty dollars he helped salvage and keeps hidden in an offshore account. Out of the blue, he gets an offer to invest in a dive outfit in the Cayman Islands and the plan is simplebuy more boats and book lots of fake trips. Hes intrigued and wants to legitimize some of the money but so far, every business venture hes attempted has been an unmitigated disaster. Lauren Gold, his cohort and girlfriend and herself a millionaire, catches a flight from Miami to the Cayman Islands to check it outand promptly disappears. Following a cryptic text message from the kidnapper, Courage meets a mysterious Cuban woman at a popular Miami tourist attraction prepared to receive the ransom demand. The lady in white knows secrets about his family and the source of his illicit cash; she warns him the counterrevolution is coming, and that Monkey needs his money. Ricardo Monkey Morales is an enigmaa real world Cuban-born James Bond rumored to be a drug runner, CIA operative and international assassinbut theres a problem. Monkey was shot and killed in a bar fight in Miami decades ago. While Laurens safety hangs in the balance, Courage discovers a manifesto written in Spanish detailing plans to stage a coup to overthrow the Cuban communist government. Desperately weighing fact from fiction, Courage finds himself in a strange world where dead men walk . . . and nothing is as it seems.