As the youngest bureau chief and head of the Chicago Police Department's Major Case Squad, Boone Drake seems to have it all under control. Only those closest to him know that just a few short years ago, he lost everything that mattered to him in a tragic accident. After years of healing, his life is back on track. He recently married a wonderful woman named Haeley, adopted her son, bought a beautiful home, and rediscovered his faith. But Boone can't fight the feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong . . . again.

When an all-too-personal case takes Boone to Beijing at a time when Haeley can least afford to let him go, Boone is forced to make a difficult choice. There he becomes enmeshed in a dangerous human-trafficking ring that takes him through the famed Hutong District's narrow streets, alleys, and hovels. Teamed with a former Liberation Army officer, Boone has one chance to pull off an elaborate sting and rescue a young boy before he disappears forever.

THE BREAKTHROUGH

A PRECINCT 11 NOVELBy JERRY B. JENKINS

TYNDALE HOUSE PUBLISHERS, INC.

Copyright © 2012 Jerry B. Jenkins
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4143-0909-5

Chapter One

DREAD

JUNE 21

The last time Boone Drake felt so sunny about life, storm clouds beyond the horizon unleashed a torrent that washed away everything he loved.

His wife.

His son.

His home.

His faith.

His passion for police work.

His reason for being.

That in just a few years he was back on top left him reeling. If Boone could only take credit for doing more than merely hanging on while his world slowly rebuilt itself ...

Now he enjoyed a new wife, a new son, a new home, a renewed faith, and an even deeper passion for his work. And all, it seemed, in spite of himself.

Grateful didn't begin to describe how Boone felt about everyone and everything that coalesced to salve his raw existence, to restore him. Obligated was more like it. At his most despairing, people who cared about him had seemed to conspire to force him to hang on until the arduous healing could begin.

Why was it, then, that being back to a pinnacle in his personal and professional and spiritual lives left Boone wary? Was it all too good to be true? Surely there was no guarantee that a guy could be metaphorically stomped to within an inch of death only once in his life.

What might be looming?

Was Boone's unease a character flaw, a chink in the armor of his faith? Didn't he deserve success and happiness?

Well, of course he didn't. He knew what he deserved. When he had gotten serious about his spiritual life, he had come to understand where he stood with God. He had deserved all the bad stuff. This abundance was grace, pure and simple.

It was not a wise man, Boone knew, who looked for trouble. One in his profession, however, had to be ever vigilant. With that alertness came intuition, street smarts. And Boone's were telling him he might be luxuriating in the tranquility before a tempest.

Even his pastor, a master of texting just the right Scripture reference at just the right time, had appeared to drop the ball today, the first day of summer. Boone's phone chirped a little after 8 p.m., just as he was preparing to leave his Major Case Squad office for home. He gathered his stuff with one hand and thumbed the tiny screen with the other. The note from Francisco Sosa read: Job 5:7ff.

Normally Boone waited till he had a moment to look up the references, but this he had to see. Sosa had found some nugget of encouragement for him in Job, really?

On the elevator at the Area 4, District 11 stationhouse on West Harrison Street, with everything else tucked under his arm, Boone accessed his mobile Bible and brought up:

People are born for trouble as readily as sparks fly up from a fire.

On that cheery note, the youngest bureau chief in the history of the Chicago Police Department headed wearily to his car. The thermometer had hit triple digits that afternoon—which rarely, if ever, happened before late July in the Windy City—and Boone had had to endure a rare day in uniform.

He preferred a suit and tie, as did most detectives, but when Downtown decreed a uniform for some official to-do, even chiefs obeyed. Boone had wanted to decline, but he had to pick his battles. He had endured enough politics in his new role. The chiefs of four of the other five major bureaus within the department—Patrol, Detectives, Organizational Development, and Administration—didn't see the need for another. The fifth happened to be Jack Keller, chief of the Organized Crime Division (OCD), and critics said he backed Boone only because he had been his partner, then his boss and mentor.

Keller, steely gray and pushing a taut sixty, advised Boone to stay above the fray. "It's not your fight," he said as they worked out together one day. "It's what the super wants, and it's been approved by the city council's subcommittee, so it's gonna happen, end of story."

Boone put his uniform cap on the backseat, removed the leather Sam Browne belt that carried his handcuffs, ammunition, and service sidearm, and placed it on the floor. He hung his coat near the rear passenger door to keep it from blocking his vision when he drove. As he slid in and checked his mirrors, he was stunned afresh to see the single star on his collar. It likely hardly registered to anyone not on the job, but Chicago coppers knew what it meant. He was one of six chiefs, making him one of the nine top cops of more than thirteen thousand in the city.

The temperature was still in the nineties, though the sun had begun to sink, and Boone felt fortunate the AC kicked in fast in his brand-new BMW 760Li—a sedan he wouldn't have sprung for if not for his wife. Not to mention he was also driving to a house he would not have enjoyed but for her.

It wasn't that Boone had married into money. Well, he had, but he hadn't meant to. The former Haeley Lamonica's seven-figure settlement from the City of Chicago for false arrest had actually been won late in their courtship and paid early in their marriage.

Neither Boone nor Haeley had ever been people of means. She had been a single mother, struggling to get by. He had been well compensated for his age but certainly was not wealthy. His new role paid in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars a month, but that was nothing compared to Haeley's windfall. It had resulted from a sordid case that had exposed corruption at the highest levels of the CPD. What to do with the money became a dilemma.

Boone had wanted nothing to do with it. "It's yours alone to do with what you want."

"I don't want it at all," Haeley had said. She took seriously the admonition that it was harder for a rich person to get into heaven than for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle. "I mean, who wouldn't want to be rich?" she said. "But it's not what we're about, and it terrifies me."

Yet Boone, along with Haeley's attorney—who was entitled to a third of the money—had persuaded her to take it. And they had all celebrated one warm spring evening the previous year on The Settlement, newly anchored at Belmont Harbor. "You can give your two-thirds away for all I care," Friedrich Zappolo, Esquire, told her. "My third went for—"

"This boat, I know," she said.

Haeley told Boone she had finally concluded that she would accept the money because, for one thing, she was entitled to it. And she had caveats. "First, I want to give you a gift."

"No need," Boone said. "You and Max are all I want, and—"

"Don't deny me. When else in my life would I ever be able to give you anything really worth something?"

He had acquiesced, and she had bought him the car of his dreams—but one that wouldn't raise too many eyebrows at the department.

The second condition was that she wanted a nice, big home with a fireplace in a safe neighborhood. In Chicago that hardly meant ostentatious, but it did mean a place beyond the reach of even a bureau chief.

Zappolo, who had helped with tax ramifications, told her, "You know, even after the house and the car, you still have well over a million left. You talked before about investing in a side fund to put your kid through college."

"Makes sense, Hael," Boone said. "Put a chunk away; let it grow for Max."

Zappolo had referred them to a lawyer experienced in family law, who had accomplished Boone's adoption of the beautiful blond boy.

"A college fund is nonnegotiable, Fritz," Haeley said, running both hands through her long, dark...