The Van Life Skip Tracer
A Baja California Manhunt

About this book:

Frank Vance doesn't chase skips for the glory—he does it for the gas money and the mortgage on his Imperial Beach shack. But when a routine bond recovery in Baja nabs a wire-fraud runner living the #vanlife dream off-grid, the job turns personal. The fugitive's campsite yields an impossible sight: a grey Mercedes Sprinter with a custom roof rack Frank welded himself three years ago. It belonged to his brother, Marcus, who vanished into the peninsula's salt flats and was declared dead. The van is moving south. Someone is driving it. And they know the backroads better than Frank does.

With nine days on the clock, a prisoner in cuffs, and a retired Mexican detective warning him off the deep desert, Frank trades the border run for a manhunt down Highway 1. From the surf breaks of Rosarito to the solar-powered encampments of digital nomads, from the salt mines of Guerrero Negro to the shark-toothed cliffs of Cabo Pulmo, the trail pulls him into a subculture where disappearing is a currency and every stealth camper has something to hide. The deeper he drives, the clearer it becomes: Marcus didn't drown. He was erased. And the man behind the wheel of his brother's rig is still out there, kicking up dust, waiting for Frank to catch up.

*The Van Life Skip Tracer* is a gritty, sun-bleached thriller that blends classic PI noir with the raw beauty of the Baja peninsula. Think *The Long Goodbye* meets *The Old Patagonian Express*—where the road doesn't offer escape, it offers a reckoning. Buckle up. The asphalt ends at Land's End, and Frank Vance is driving straight for it.