BLOOD COVENANT of the Sergeants Club

A Rick Ryder Murder Mystery

A blood-soaked dollar. A deadly secret. A promise sealed in blood.

For two years, Rick Ryder has been solving murders for a dollar a day. Now, after closing his latest case, he’s ready to take the summer off, return to his ranch near Cassville, Missouri, and spend some much-needed time with his family.

But murder doesn’t take vacations.

Ryder’s plans are shattered when Annie Harris, his neighbor and a biology professor at Crowder College, stumbles into his fifteen-year-old sister Marissa’s birthday party—covered in blood and clutching a blood-soaked dollar bill. Her desperate plea is chilling: Find the killer before the others die.

Soon, bodies begin to fall, and each crime scene bears the same disturbing signature: a wooden plaque displaying a playing card and a Bible verse burned into the wood. Every clue points toward a bizarre connection to Crowder College’s Sergeant’s Club—a secretive organization founded years ago by Ryder’s own mother.

Now, the club’s original members are being hunted down, one by one.

What dark secret did these men and women swear to protect? What drove them to seal their silence with a blood covenant, promising to carry the truth to their graves? And why is someone willing to kill to keep that promise?

As Ryder races to uncover the truth, he discovers that the past is far more dangerous than he imagined. The closer he gets to the killer, the more he realizes that the secret behind the murders may reach into his own family—and expose a truth that could shatter everything he believes about himself.

Some secrets are worth killing for. Others are worth dying for.

Can Rick Ryder break the Blood Covenant before another victim dies? Or will this case become his last—and reveal that the life he has lived has been built on one enormous lie?

The dollar-a-day detective is back. And this time, the truth may cost him everything.