Not On My Watch

The final chapter of the Jacob (Jake) Oswald Blades Private Detective Series . Set in May 1952, Not On My Watch follows hard-boiled Big City private investigator Jake Blades as he investigates a series of high-profile power grid thefts executed by an elusive saboteur dubbed the "Phantom Sparky". . The case leads Jake to the flat of university physicist Professor Emerson Cartwright, where he recovers quantum mathematical formulas and delivery receipts pointing to Templeton Electronics. . Unbeknownst to Jake, his secretary Betty Price—who is secretly an undercover CIA agent—decodes the equations and realizes they utilize high-energy electromagnetism to warp space-time. . Infiltrating Templeton Electronics during a severe lightning storm, Jake discovers Cartwright held hostage by Soviet Commander Volkov, who is hijacking the regional power grid to operate a massive time-warping device. . Jake successfully frees Cartwright and engages the Soviet operatives, but is thrown into the machine's pulsating core just as a catastrophic quantum explosion vaporizes the facility, leaving behind a 150-foot crater. While federal authorities cover up the disaster as an industrial accident and officially list Jake as "Dead by Incineration," the quantum wormhole actually hurls him 75 years into the future, depositing him dazed in an alley on Saturday, May 2, 2027. . Back in 1952, Police Chief Patrick "Paddie" Shaughnessy and Betty Price exercise a moral "Duty to Disobey" by defying CIA orders to burn all agency files, physically smuggling over two decades of Jake's case records out of the precinct to preserve his legacy. . In 2027, Jake is discovered by Paddie's great-granddaughter, forensic officer Margaret "Maggie" Shaughnessy, and her brother Patrick (who is pitching a television miniseries based on Jake's life). . Jake must decide on his future? Returning would allow Jake to go back to his familiar world, his old office at the Mayfair Building, and his closest companions—his loyal associate Elizabeth "Betty" Price and his best friend Paddie Shaughnessy or remain in 2027, Jake permanently embraces his future. . It's a temporal paradox conclusion is for you, the reader, to decide once you read the novel?