THE STAY BEHIND: For everyone who stayed. You know why. So do I. we.: BOOK 2 OF COURT HOUSE TRILOGY

A Psychological Thriller / Midwest Gothic SeriesWashington Court House, Ohio: a quiet Midwestern town with a name that sounds safe, civic, orderly. It isn't.Behind the brick façades and polite hellos, something feral moves under the floorboards. The institutions meant to protect the town-its schools, its newsroom, its families-have been rotting from the inside out. And the people who stayed silent the longest are the ones about to scream the loudest.THE COURT HOUSE TRILOGY is a three-book psychological detonation told through the eyes of the Go-Along, the Stay-Behind, and the Come-Back-three roles every corrupt system depends on... until the system collapses.This is not a story about heroes. It's a story about survivors who finally stop cooperating.BOOK I - THE GO-ALONGMarcus has spent his whole life doing what he's told-until the day he sees something he can't unsee. Now he's driving down US Route 35 with a secret in the passenger seat and the entire town closing in behind him. Washington Court House taught him to obey. It never taught him how to run.BOOK II - THE STAY-BEHINDDelia stayed. She always stays. She knows the break room whispers, the locked doors, the mug with the wrong date on it. She knows what the institution did-and what it's still doing. When the truth finally claws its way to the surface, Delia becomes the one thing the town never expected: a witness who refuses to shut up.BOOK III - THE COME-BACKToby left the newsroom years ago. He swore he'd never return. But when a folder lands on his desk-one that should not exist-he drives south toward the town that broke him. Washington Court House has been waiting. And it has one last story to tell.