Riptide

The blond is Eve, the brunette Rene, fast friends, both stunning, both desperate to shed their sordid past and claim freedom. In hot pursuit, the icy, sociopathic madam Edmonda LaBeach, intent on recovering all she has lost. Into this whirlpool walks Ray Strand, a war hero whose homecoming has been shattered by his troubled wife's suicide.
Hitchhiking into an unknown future, Strand flags the fugitive women and is invited to accompany them in their glamorous convertible. Ray and Rene fall hard for each other, but in this world of shadows, what is real and what is not proves difficult to discern.
In the black and the white, the dark and the light, Ray Strand's quest for salvation plunges him through the depths of lust, jealousy, love, deception, violence and murder, and into a life-altering confrontation with the truth. It could be fatal, or lighting the gloom at the end of the tunnel - it could be hope.

Mark James Montgomery is a novelist and screenwriter residing in the Portland, Oregon area with his forever wife and a creek that runs all year. Outrider is his fourth novel. He can be contacted at litcanon@gmail.com