Paradox

The novel, a sequel following events connected to the Erebus Resort disaster in which de-extincted Neanderthals escaped into the Colorado wilderness, opens on two parallel mysteries. In Rome, Brother Padraig O'Halloran, a member of the Irish Pallottine Fathers, a Catholic religious order that serves as custodians of a relic housed in the Basilica of San Silvestro, discovers that someone has sawed a fragment from the skull of Saint John the Baptist.

In Colorado, Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Agent Frankie Cash receives a call from Eagle County Sheriff James Colcord about a murder in the Flat Tops Wilderness. The victim, William Grooms, a seventy-five-year-old recluse, lies on his cabin table dressed in a white lace nightgown, silver dollars pressed into empty eye sockets, his right foot crushed and bloody. Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Chris Huizinga determines Grooms was embalmed while still alive. His stomach contains Communion wafers and sacramental wine, force-fed over three days using a medieval screw gag. His foot was crushed with a Spanish boot, an iron torture device from the Inquisition.

Rancher Paul Brooksfield, who discovered the body, explains that his wife, Margie, a certified financial planner, regularly managed Grooms's finances and delivered his groceries. Grooms had schizophrenia and held delusions about lake monsters, the ability to fly, and a UFO crash in the Flat Tops. Paul reports seeing four hikers in camouflage crossing his pastures nine days earlier. Cash and Colcord interview Father Timothy Moore at Saint Mary's Church in Burns, where the priest's sexist remark prompts Cash to call him a "sexist prick," resulting in a formal complaint and written caution from CBI Director Blaisdell Holmes.

Through warrants for Margie's satellite phone, investigators trace Grooms's last calls to Javier Castillo, an exobiology professor in San Francisco fired for scientific fraud. Cash interviews Castillo, who explains that Grooms claimed to have witnessed a UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) crash and found an alien artifact at the site. Castillo runs a nonprofit called Paradox dedicated to investigating UAP evidence and speculates that aliens killed Grooms to recover the artifact.

Forensic analysis reveals that one of the Communion wafers came from a convent in Penne, Italy, indicating the killers have an Italian connection. Bank records show over $2.5 million transferred from Grooms's account through Margie's to Paradox, all structured under reporting thresholds. Margie admits she diverted $220,000 to pay for her daughter's heart surgery. Grooms's will, bearing Margie's signature as witness, names her sole beneficiary.

Castillo flies to Colorado and trespasses at the crime scene searching for the artifact. After his arrest and release, his dismembered body surfaces in McMillan Lake. Unlike Grooms, Castillo was not embalmed or dressed in white, but his foot was crushed with the same Spanish boot, and he was killed with a garrote vil, a device that drove a spike through his spinal cord. Cash theorizes the differing treatment reflects the killers' beliefs: Grooms, a baptized Catholic, received ritualistic last rites, while Castillo, who was Jewish, was discarded without ceremony.

The Vatican dispatches Brother Niall Armagh, an Irish Pallottine who previously served as a law enforcement chaplain in Chicago, to recover the stolen relic quietly. After learning Castillo went to Colorado, Armagh follows and joins the investigation. Agent George Standish, assisting with digital forensics, traces Paradox's money through shell companies to Krikor Khachatryan, a twenty-seven-year-old Armenian with no digital footprint, located in Portugal's Serra da Estrela mountains. Khachatryan contacts Cash through encrypted channels, revealing that an organization called Devotio is systematically killing Paradox members, and delivers one urgent directive: sequence the relic's DNA.

Cash defies Holmes's refusal to authorize testing and secretly enlists DNA specialist Michael Reno to sequence the bone fragment. The results show two-thousand-year-old DNA that is partly human male but contains sequences resembling synthetic DNA, a technological impossibility. As Reno leaves the CBI parking lot, an assailant hiding in his car forces him at gunpoint to surrender the relic. Reno swallows the vial to prevent its capture. His body is found at an abandoned mill, tortured and killed in the same ritualistic manner as Grooms. The relic is recovered from his stomach during autopsy.

Holmes removes Cash from the case for insubordination. Cash secretly delivers the relic to Dr. Greg Strickland at the University of Colorado for ancient DNA analysis, which confirms the anomalous results without explanation. Deputy DA Nova Euclid, investigating independently, visits Margie in jail and learns Paradox's true purpose: to prove that alien visitors to Earth included Jesus and his closest followers. This revelation offended Margie's faith so deeply that she had Paul chase Castillo away with a shotgun.

Armagh, visiting Saint Mary's Church, meets Brother Gregory, an imposing Benedictine monk from a nearby monastery. On a later visit, Armagh tours Father Moore's private basement museum of Inquisition memorabilia, noting iron devices he later mentions to Colcord. The sheriff recognizes their potential significance as the murder weapons, but a judge refuses to sign a search warrant without stronger evidence.

Cash, still investigating on her own, hikes to Dome Peak and finds evidence that people searched the area near the alleged crash site. She then returns to Solitary Lake and discovers a cleverly carved buoy concealing a submerged object. Armed figures in camouflage emerge from the trees and open fire. Colcord, who followed Cash out of concern, provides covering fire as she paddles out and retrieves a small yellow dry bag from beneath the lake. Colcord is shot and dragged into the cabin, where operatives torture him with the Spanish boot. Cash kills two attackers and reaches Colcord just before the embalming process begins.

They flee by canoe through a waterfall into a flooded mine shaft marked on Grooms's map. Deep inside, methane levels are dangerously high. When the priest and Brother Gregory, now revealed as Devotio operatives, follow them in, the suffocating Colcord provokes the monk into firing his rifle. The muzzle flash ignites the methane, causing an explosion that kills both operatives. Father Moore, who grew suspicious after recognizing that items from his collection matched the torture devices described in news reports, has followed Gregory to the cabin and guides the injured Cash and Colcord out of the collapsing mine.

In the canoe, Colcord opens the dry bag, revealing a slightly egg-shaped, purplish-white sphere. When Cash picks it up, it transmits a massive burst of knowledge and images directly into her brain. Colcord and Moore each experience the same phenomenon. All three are profoundly shaken. Moore argues the knowledge would upend every religion and cause catastrophic wars: "This knowledge was never meant for us." Cash agrees, and Moore drops the artifact into the depths of Solitary Lake.

In the aftermath, Colcord returns the bone fragment to Armagh, who receives it and signs an affidavit of receipt. Strickland, despite Cash's instructions to destroy all DNA data, secretly retains and encrypts the files. Euclid secures Margie's release through a plea deal on the embezzlement charges. Cash and Colcord return to Moore's basement with a warrant and confirm that Gregory used items from the collection as murder weapons. Gregory was part of Devotio, an extremist Catholic society descended from the original Inquisition that had been suppressing evidence of alien contact for over a century. Cash and Colcord agree never to speak of the artifact or its revelations. Reporter Robin Twen airs an investigative report revealing that Cash's earlier firing from the Portland Criminal Investigations Division was orchestrated by a corrupt police chief. Cash is publicly rehabilitated and celebrated as a local hero at Colcord's café, the Ore House.