The Next Moment: One Moment You are Here...

Following a late round of dinner and drinks, a small group of colleagues attending an international conference in Poland discover a person lying in a pool of blood at the curbside of a nearby street. The disemboweled man, bleeding to death, with his dying breath utters one word while pushing a bloodied and crumpled business card, along with a door key, onto the sidewalk pavement.

At that moment, the quartet sees three men in dark clothing and hats leaving the scene. The business card and key lead them to a flat in a distressed part of town where they find the place tossed over as if it had been frantically searched by someone looking for something of importance.

The friends understand the implication of the dying man's final word - a group of global elites who rule over other geographical sub-groups - hiding behind public and private institutions to deal in drugs, armaments, and human beings while destabilizing economies, dividing populations, and accumulating more powerful control over society.

The colleagues must pool their resources and wits, urged on by a solitary, grade-school-aged, refugee girl, as they subsequently encounter hobbyists, arm-chair sleuths, mystics, whistle-blowers, interdimensional beings, and thousands of unsolved missing children's cases in the wake of the murder. In the shadows, all are being followed by a hidden network who will stop at nothing to keep their activities secret.

The evidentiary trail takes them from Poland - eventually arriving at a deep underground military installation in the western United States where extremely classified, unacknowledged special access programs are being surreptitiously conducted. Their quest is to connect with a rival confederation of insiders in hopes of discovering the true motives behind the murder, find the missing children, and hold those accountable for justice.

Author: Erin Leigh-Padgett

Publisher: Independently Published

Publication Date: Mar 31, 2023

Number of Pages: 762 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: NA

ISBN-13: 9798389486041