A Question of Fate

Description

Hunting down human traffickers could get you killed. You’d think even someone who wasn’t a genius could figure that out.
Sasha Borodin, an intensely complex and all too saintly man, attempting to escape the consequences of his own extraordinary intellect and a torturous past, and Katya, a mysterious, resourceful young woman, meet in 1999 under dire circumstances. Sasha has been lured away from his security in Sydney to give a speech anonymously at a Global Human Trafficking conference in New York––a trap. When Katya tries to stop his abduction, she is thrown into the back of a darkened van with him, headed for a three-day trip to California and a waiting vengeful trafficker. Was Katya sent to try to protect him or was it Fate?
When Sasha discovers Katya can touch him––the first person to be able to do so since the death of his Vietnamese wife, Le, thirty-three years before––his world begins to change. Sasha discovers that Katya was taught Mandarin and Vietnamese by her Han Chinese grandmother before she learned English, runs a refugee sanctuary, is a martial arts instructor and an amazing singer and musician––and that they share a psychic connection, inexplicable to a man of science.
Katya repeatedly saves Sasha’s life; when she discovers who, and what he is, she finds herself secretly falling in love with this obsessive, humorless manic-depressive. She is amused rather than concerned about Sasha’s clueless attraction to handsome men. She plots to join his loyal, musical all-male crew on his medical boat, the Retribution, the “Trib,” bringing care and protection to coastal communities in Southeast Asia. Sasha speaks movingly of leading a string quartet onboard. Katya knows she must share Sasha with Le’s ghost and commits to helping him find his lost son.
At first Sasha hides his love as well, doubting that his passion for his work and for music can be matched by passion for a woman 30 years younger––never mind that he is fit and looks much younger than his 59 years. He remains tormented by a horrific childhood in Bergen-Belsen and closely guarded by an agency of the Australian government that has kept him inventing for them since he was 17. Sasha’s and Katya’s attempts to forge a future together are threatened by four relentless criminal brothers bent on nothing less than their utter destruction. Katya must use all her wits and cunning to save him, the crew she has come to love like brothers, and herself. Assistance in discovering the whereabouts of Sasha’s son and in defeating the worst of the brothers comes from an unexpected and most problematic source.
The first novel in the series, A Question of Fate imagines a world already changed for the better by one man’s efforts. A secretive life of inventing, service, music, and comradeship stands on the brink of being extinguished by Sasha’s all too human urges for recognition––and for retribution against the kind of cruelty and evil he has known too well.