The Devil's Bones: Cotton Malone vs. Gray Pierce

By Steve Berry and James Rollins

In this short story from the thrilling anthology FaceOff, New York Times bestselling authors Steve Berry and James Rollins—along with their popular characters Cotton Malone and Gray Pierce—team up for the first time ever.

In a visit to Copenhagen, Gray Pierce happened upon a bookshop owned by an ex-lawyer named Cotton Malone, but he never had a chance to really get to know the owner. Too bad, because they had a lot in common: Both men were ex-military, both worked for covert agencies—Malone as a freelancer under the auspices of the Justice Department; Pierce via the Department of Defense—and both are good at what they do.

Flash forward a few years to when Malone and Pierce finally get together for more than a passing hello. Halfway around the world from Denmark, Malone and Pierce are passengers on a luxury riverboat out of Brazil, both on the hunt for a maniacal botanist who’s scheming to sell the spoils of his latest Amazonian excursion—a rare orchid containing a deadly neurotoxin—to the highest bidder. That means Malone and Pierce have the length of the river boat cruise to stop him before the poison falls into the wrong hands. It’s definitely an action-packed several hours.

For more exciting pairs, check out all eleven short stories in FaceOff!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Dec 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781476788784

Steve Berry

Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Patriot Threat, The Lincoln Myth, The King’s Deception, The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson Key, The Emperor’s Tomb, The Paris Vendetta, The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. His books have been translated into forty languages with 19,000,000 copies in fifty-one countries. For more information, visit SteveBerry.org.

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Cover: The Devil's Bones, by Steve Berry and James Rollins

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The Devil’s Bones

Steve Berry and James Rollins

From the anthology FaceOff

Simon & Schuster

New York   London   Toronto   Sydney   New Delhi

STEVE BERRY

VS. JAMES ROLLINS

In his 2006 thriller, Black Order, Jim Rollins dispatched his hero, Gray Pierce, to Denmark. While there, Pierce spent two days visiting the dusty bookshops and antiquary establishments in the narrow backstreets of Copenhagen. He discovered the most help at a shop on Højbro Plads owned by an ex-lawyer from Georgia. No name. Just enough information that, if you were a fan of Steve Berry’s hero, Cotton Malone, you’d know instantly who Pierce was talking about. Jim’s purpose was to see if readers were paying attention and could discover the extent of crossover between his and Steve’s work.

He learned things on both counts.

Readers definitely noticed. Jim and Steve together received several thousand e-mails (and still do to this day). When Steve reciprocated and included a reference to Sigma Force (Jim’s clandestine agency where Gray Pierce works) in his next novel, people noticed again. Together, they continued the experiment for several more books. Eventually, fellow thriller writer Raymond Khoury (who’s part of this anthology) joined the mix. It was fun, but it also alerted the writers to the fact that their readers wanted to see the characters together.

That wasn’t possible, until the opportunity provided by this anthology.

There are a lot of similarities between Malone and Pierce. Both are ex-military. Single. With issues. They each work for a covert government agency—Pierce with Sigma, through the Defense Department—Malone, though now retired, freelances with his