Jason Scream was supposed to disappear.After fleeing north, hunted by the FBI, Vermont was never part of the plan. It was just a place to pass through. Quiet. Forgettable. Then a boy vanished. Evan Lark, seventeen, strange, invisible to everyone who mattered. The kind of kid people talk about only after it's too late. The official story is simple. Too simple. And Jason has learned the hard way that simple stories usually hide something rotten underneath. As he digs into a small town that prefers silence to truth, Jason begins to see patterns others have chosen not to notice. Men who pass through regularly. Questions no one asks. Woods that don't lie, even when people do. Jason isn't a cop.He isn't a hero.And he's done running. Cold Return is a gritty, atmospheric thriller about disappearance, complicity, and what happens when the wrong man decides to stop walking away. Some pasts don't stay buried.They hunt back. About the Author Jack H. Sloane writes noir and thriller fiction focused on disappearances, moral gray zones, and characters who live on the edges of society.His stories explore what happens when silence becomes complicity, and when the wrong person decides to stop walking away.Cold Return is his debut novel.