The Fourth Betrayal

Best friends almost from birth, Ollie Swanson and Dougie Tarkenen grow up in the idyllic surroundings of a small Pacific Northwest fishing village. Shortly after their high school graduation, they commit a desperate act and must share the secret of that act for over a decade of their young adult lives. Then Dougie turns up dead, apparently drowned in a canoe accident, and Ollie is devastated. However, Ollie discovers some tapes that Dougie had secretly recorded while working as a reporter for an Ottawa newspaper. The tapes provide evidence of high-level government corruption, and Ollie decides to pursue the story as a way of honoring his friend. But he is shocked to discover that the circumstances of Dougie's death are not what they seem; rather his death is linked to the secret they share from their youth, and to an Ottawa conspiracy to force through an oil pipeline to the West Coast. The Fourth Betrayal twists through tangled thickets of friendship, loss and greed, sacrifice, and world-class deception. As Ollie's life comes under increasing threat, he must figure out a way to protect himself and his family, all while betrayals loom and menace like phantoms in the fog.