Loose Ends

By Clancy Reynolds

Los Angeles, 1986.

Five million dollars. A document case that could destroy everyone. And three people who should have known better than to trust each other.

The Reverend has worked for Joe Escalante for fifteen years. Clean jobs. No questions asked. When Joe calls with one more collection run to Mexico, the Reverend brings along Andrew Shelby, his partner, his friend, the only man he trusts when things go sideways. It's supposed to be simple: Find Roberto Felix's widow. Retrieve the money her dead husband stole. Bring back the evidence he collected. Get paid and walk away.

But nothing about this job is simple. Esmeralda Felix has been waiting for them. Hidden in a Mexican tavern, armed and ready. She knows exactly who sent them. She knows exactly what they came for. And she has something to show them: documents that prove Joe Escalante has been cooperating with the FBI for two years. Giving them names. Their names. Trading his own men to save himself.

The Reverend and Andrew have a choice: Return to Los Angeles and deliver themselves to a man who's already sold them out. Or make a deal with the widow and go back to kill Joe Escalante first. They choose the widow.

They choose wrong.

What follows is a collision course of betrayal, violence, and cold calculation.

LOOSE ENDS is a noir crime thriller in the tradition of No Country for Old Men and The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a story about professionals who live by a code that no longer protects them, loyalty that means nothing when survival is on the line, and the cold institutional machinery that processes bodies and moves on. Set against the neon-soaked backdrop of 1980's Los Angeles and the dusty violence of the Mexican border, this is a novel about killers, con artists, and federal agents, and the understanding that in the end, everyone's just cleaning up loose ends.

No one walks away clean. Most don't walk away at all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GNLNNJQB
• ISBN13: 9798248292165
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"