The Past Present (Beast, #1)

What is that makes a man?
Body or soul?
What releases the beast within?

No one knows all the atrocities the Nazis committed against the Jewish prisoners in WWII concentration camps. Evidence of the crimes was reduced to silent ashes in the ovens. The few survivors will not speak of the hideous experiments Nazis doctors performed on them. Eva Lachman has told no one of the experiment that led to the birth of her twin boys, Jacob and Esau, at Auschwitz in 1944. She fears what would happen to them if the truth is known.

In 1993, Karl Mueller, the Nazi doctor who created the twins, has tracked Eva and her sons to the small town of Fleetwood, Md. He is determined to kill the twins, who are now men in their 40s. He considers it an act of penance for his crime against nature.

Daniel Levitt is a Nazi hunter on the trail of Dr. Mueller. Mueller killed his grandparents and left his father a paraplegic while they were at Auschwitz. Daniel is growing weary of his work, but this will be his last mission. He finds Mueller in Fleetwood, but he also finds the Lachman twins. Daniel has spent his life chasing after men whose victims he cannot help, but in Esau Lachman, Daniel might have found someone who needs his help.

The Past Present is the first episode in the Beast series. In this story, Daniel is put on the trail of Karl Mueller, who has tracked his own quarry to Fleetwood. Eva has instilled her own fear of Mueller in her boys. In Jacob's case, it has caused a paranoid fear that he is beginning to act upon.