Webinar: A Brefniverse Suspense Thriller

By Brefni O'Rourke

During a pandemic lockdown, a research assistant must present her father's data at a critical meeting, but when the CDC Director is murdered on camera, it becomes a web-based whodunit and a race against time.

The town of Brockton is on lockdown for a pandemic, as the dreaded Trinity Variant is spreading at an exponential rate. They're also under a shelter-in-place order due to a mass shooting at a local bar. Sheriff Reardon believes the suspect, Sean Payton, to be a radical antivaxxer who snapped due to cabin fever.

Sean flees into the snow-covered woods as police choppers close in. His ex-girlfriend Kate Baxter, a research assistant, doesn't believe he's capable of what he's accused of, but she's got other concerns, as her father, brilliant virologist Dr. Curt Baxter has taken ill despite being fully vaccinated.

With Curt hospitalized, Kate must take his place at an emergency webinar, that of the Presidential Pandemic Task Force. A strategy must be devised for taking on the variant before the spread becomes untenable and Kate is tasked with presenting her father's research.

But when she refreshes the data to view troubling trends, and sees one of his lab rabbits dead, she realizes he's missed something. She sends a blood sample over to Curt's colleague, Dr. Marvin Wallach via a high-tech drone, and what Wallach finds disturbs him.

The booster shot appears to be accelerating the disease and not stopping it, also causing a spike in side effects. As the webinar starts, Kate must break with her father's talking points and bring up this inconvenient truth.

But her news does not go over well, CDC Director Randall Jenkins clashes with her and questions her qualifications. Tension rises, but then the unthinkable happens, an intruder appears behind the CDC Director. Kate can only watch as the attacker, dressed in the garb of a Plague Doctor, brutally assaults the high-ranking scientist and lingers on camera like a dark harbinger.

The esteemed panel of scientist and advisors, including Kate's mother, Dr. Holly Forbes-Baxter, struggle to process what they've just seen. Cobb, a DHS agent, joins the call and insists everyone stay on the line while he sends help to all their locations.

Chaos and finger pointing only escalate as Melissa Spencer, advisor to the president, insists they continue with their work and vote on an emergency measure to force vaccinations.

But when the Surgeon General is next, taken out by another Plague Doctor assassin, it becomes all too clear, someone is playing a deadly game, and exacting a hidden agenda, determined to knock them off, one by one.

Kate must piece together clues given by the Plague Doctors and parse the accusations flying between scientists and politicians, before her own mother is targeted next. But as a once in a century snowstorm arrives, she'll have no choice but to stay where she is and stay online in order to ferret out the killer and his masked motives.

When Sheriff Reardon and Sean arrive at her door, amidst the blinding blizzard, she'll have to determine which of them is there to help, and which is there to seal her fate.

WEBINAR

Terror has joined the call.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GG471MHY
• ISBN13: 9798243325158
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"