Competitive Dreams (Dreams and Reality, #19) / Dreams and Reality (ePub)

With the murder of the serial killer known as The Ghost Maker, the serial killer club he ran became dormant. Now, someone calling themself Mictlan the Collector has taken control of the defunct club. He's arranged a competition for a select group of members. The serial killer with the most points at the end will win a million dollars in cryptocurrency, and he's chosen Kansas City as the hunting grounds. Fearing this could happen after The Ghost Maker's death, the NSA had an operative infiltrate the nefarious club. The operative gives the SCTU advanced warning of the competition.

To stop it, Aislinn Cain and the SCTU must identify and capture Mictlan the Collector before the first day. Identifying and capturing a serial killer is never easy and Mictlan complicates the issue by requiring competitors to take a victim to gain admittance. The competitors have less than one week to complete the entrance task, which divides the resources of the SCTU between trying to identify Mictlan the Collector and identifying the serial killers participating in the competition.

For a chance at a million dollars in cryptocurrency, serial killers will travel far and wide to participate. With visiting serial killers comes new signature methods requiring the SCTU to reach out to their law enforcement contacts all over the world to at least attempt to find their place of origin and gain any files on them that might exist. The situation is dire enough that the CIA activates their own special black books operation referred to as The Home Defense Program, forcing the SCTU to coordinate with the CIA as well as local law enforcement.

Finally, as the start date of the competition gets nearer, panicked politicians want to enact martial law for the Kansas City Metro area. Convinced that martial law will result in more deaths than the competition, the SCTU is racing against the ticking clock, fighting their limited manpower, and extreme panic to save their home city from becoming a grisly battlefield.