Dead Water

By Scott P. Hicks

Dead Water
Shadow Protocols, Book 3

Lake Superior is not giving up its dead.
It is sending them back wrong.

When Major Cassandra Morgan boards a drifting freighter outside Duluth Harbor, she expects sabotage, smuggling, or some classified military disaster no one wants named. What she finds is worse: frozen bodies with impossible injuries, equipment stamped with a buried government project, and water that moves as if it remembers things that have not happened yet.

Cass is trained to trust evidence, chain of command, and the hard edge of procedure. But the lake is breaking every rule she knows.

A vanished research program called Deep Gauge has left something buried beneath the harbor. A private tech company wants to control it. A missing brother may have been pulled into it years before. And every new anomaly brings Duluth closer to catastrophe.

To stop it, Cass must work with Dr. Gabriel Reyes, a brilliant scientist whose theories sound insane until the lake starts proving him right. Together, they uncover a pattern hidden in old wrecks, strange harmonic signals, Indigenous warnings, and a deadly machine built to turn time itself into a weapon.

But the deeper they go, the more the lake pushes back.

Bodies age in seconds. Boats appear where they should not exist. Voices come through the static from the wrong year. And beneath the black water, something vast is waking around a pulse no one can shut off.

Dead Water is a fast-paced supernatural techno-thriller about buried experiments, ancient warnings, military secrets, and the terrifying idea that some places do not forget.

Inside this thriller, you will find:

A deadly Lake Superior mystery where the past and future collideA hardened military investigator forced to question everything she trustsA brilliant scientist racing to decode an impossible signalA vanished brother whose disappearance may be the key to stopping the disasterA classified experiment buried beneath a city on the edge of collapseHigh-stakes action, eerie atmosphere, and escalating supernatural dangerA complete thriller arc with a chilling final hook

Cass has survived combat, betrayal, and classified operations built on lies.

But nothing in her life prepared her for a lake that can remember forward.

And if she cannot stop what is rising beneath Duluth, the next wreck may not come from the past.

It may come from tomorrow.

Back-of-Book Blurb

Lake Superior is not giving up its dead.

When Major Cassandra Morgan boards a drifting freighter outside Duluth Harbor, she expects a military crisis. Instead, she finds frozen bodies, impossible injuries, and evidence tied to a buried research project called Deep Gauge.

The deeper Cass digs, the more the lake turns against her.

Time fractures. Old wrecks return. A missing brother leaves traces from years he may not have lived. And beneath the harbor, a hidden machine begins pulsing with a signal that could tear Duluth apart.

With scientist Gabriel Reyes at her side, Cass must uncover the truth before a private defense contractor turns the lake into a weapon.

But Lake Superior has been keeping its own record.

And it remembers what comes next.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FKNH77HS
• ISBN13: 9798294922719
• Release Date: July 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.0"