The Uncounted

Arthur Flinch, a meticulously by-the-numbers IRS audit investigator nearing retirement, prided himself on his unflinching logic and perfect case record. Teased behind his back as "The Abacus" for his cold detachment, Arthur believed numbers were the ultimate truth, never realizing he was playing for the wrong team.

His final audit leads him to the dilapidated Thorne Creek, home to a prosperous timber company whose output defies its ghostly appearance. A shocking fall through a hidden floor plunges Arthur into a subterranean nightmare: a community of African Americans, descendants of those never freed after emancipation, kept captive for over a century. What's worse, Arthur uncovers that their generational enslavement was unwittingly funded by federal reparations.

Trapped below the line, Arthur's rigid worldview shatters. Faced with the raw humanity of "The Uncounted" and battling powerful antagonists-from his own federal agency's Deputy Director Eleanor Vance, to the corrupt State Senator Malcolm Thorne, and the ruthless patriarch Elias Thorne-Arthur must shed his numerical shell. With the unlikely aid of a nervous Keeper and the unwavering belief of his empathetic partner, Agent Naomi Vance, he fights to expose a truth buried deeper than any ledger, one that could ignite a national reckoning on the very meaning of freedom.

In a world where some truths are too inconvenient to be known, Arthur Flinch, the man who never flinched from a number, will finally learn that some lives are never meant to be uncounted.