THE LEASE — A Texas Oil Thriller

At 2:17 in the morning, landman Jack Mercer finds his mentor dead beside an abandoned oil well in Brazoria County, Texas.

Tommy Baines taught Jack everything about reading land, leases, and the lies men tell to get both. Now Tommy is gone, the scene doesn’t add up, and by sunrise someone is already hunting Jack and his wife, Kate.

The trail leads to the Calder tract, a dead lease that has sat untouched for thirty-nine years, and to the powerful families who built Texas oil fortunes on top of it. Rourke Energy. The Vales. A sitting U.S. senator. A secret government program called Orpheus. And a buried past that reaches straight into Jack’s own life.

With a guarded Houston attorney, a federal agent, and an aging oil baron who may know more than he’s saying, Jack and Kate race through cash motels, ranch-house ambushes, and abandoned refineries toward the truth hidden under Calder. But every answer costs them something. And the deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes that the land was never the only thing buried.

Some leases should never be drilled. Some secrets should never be found.

THE LEASE is a fast-paced Texas thriller of oil, family, and buried history, perfect for readers who love conspiracy thrillers, small-town secrets, and the Gulf Coast.