The Ghost Cargo - The Interstellar Claims Bureau Series, #4

A dead cargo manifest. Stolen medicine. Two professionals who refuse the easy answer.

Thirty years ago, the Mercy Run cargo was certified destroyed. Now its containers have returned to Kepler Gate intact—filled with medicine stolen only weeks ago. Each new scan makes the mystery worse, replacing current serial numbers with the names of refugees officially listed as dead.

Asha Bell, the station's fifty-three-year-old chief freight provenance archivist, knows that correcting the record could expose people whose survival once depended on secrecy. Noah Rivas, the forty-nine-year-old captain of Customs Rescue, knows that every delay leaves clinics without urgently needed treatment.

As representatives from six worlds gather for a high-stakes Cargo Concord, Asha and Noah must follow material traces, contradictory manifests, and a hidden history through Kepler Gate's bright freight infrastructure. Their methods collide: she protects context and consent; he protects lives through decisive action. But their long-standing professional respect is becoming something warmer—and far harder to keep safely compartmentalized.

To solve the ghost cargo, they must distinguish a protective lie from a present crime before public fear turns survivors into suspects and stolen medicine disappears for good.

Reader Promises

Each Interstellar Claims Bureau novel contains a complete mystery and complete woman/man romance and may be read on its own, while publication order gives the strongest Null Petition payoff.