The Path of Duty and Honor
by William Gensburger
& JC Ryan
Two hundred and fifty years after the birth of a nation, its first president walks among the living again!
Historian Nathan Scott thinks Presidents’ Day at Mount Vernon will be just another book signing for his biography entitled: By George.
Until he meets a man he believes to be an actor portraying George Washington so convincingly that it is easy to accept him as the first president.
Thrust into the center of a political firestorm, author Nathan Scott and investigative journalist Sarah James become reluctant handlers to the one person who may be able to remind a fractured republic what it was meant to be.
As Washington awakens in a world of twenty‑four‑hour news cycles, weaponized conspiracy theories, and razor‑thin elections, every word he speaks becomes ammunition.
The current president, Maria Cander, believes she is a descendant of one of the founding fathers, an allegation Nathan has made in his controversial book. She is also the architect of a radical bill before Congress, the American Restoration Act (ARA), that will end corruption and restore the vision of the founding fathers.
Meanwhile, a few ruthless senators see in this Washington, the ultimate threat—and launch a covert campaign to control, discredit, or destroy the living symbol of the Founders’ vision.
With the glare of the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, Nathan and Sarah must fight to keep Washington safe.
The battle for America’s future comes down to a final confrontation between a man who helped build the republic and a man determined to destroy it.
Blending historically accurate information with an intimate character drama and the towering presence of George Washington himself, The Path of Duty and Honor is a gripping present-day political thriller about life, duty, second chances, national memory, and whether a divided nation can still recognize the truth when it’s standing right in front of it.
You'll want to read this history-based thriller.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. Release date May 1, 2026
About the Authors:
William Gensburger is the bestselling author of ‘Texas Dead: A Season of Death,’ ‘Texas Dead: A Season of Despair,’ ‘Distant Rumors: 10 Short Stories,’ ‘Verisium: Conversations with AI on the Meaning of Life and Death,’ and ‘The Era of Synthetic Reality, and other stories.’ He is also a Certified Hypnotherapist Coach (IAPCP) and lives outside Boise, Idaho.
JC Ryan's books have received high acclaim from readers who have bought more than 800,000 of his books and read more than 57 million pages. He is the bestselling author of over 35 books. Ryan has been married to his college sweetheart since 1978; they have two married daughters and a grandchild.
EXCERPT:
July 1, 2026
America, when it decided to celebrate, did not do so quietly.
The park had been turned overnight into a hybrid of county fair and revival meeting. Red, white, and blue bunting hung from every tree and booth; vendors sold hot dogs, funnel cake dusted with powdered sugar, and T-shirts, caps, and keychains proclaiming "Restore Us" in bold letters, from booths that stretched the length of the main path.
Children ran between the legs of adults who were too busy taking photographs of the stage to notice. A group of veterans in matching caps had claimed a prime spot near the front and were holding small American flags with the quiet authority of men who had earned the right to stand wherever they pleased.
Near the main path, a father in a faded volunteer cap from Mount Vernon leaned in to speak to his pre-teenage son, Jake. The boy, in low-slung sweatpants, a wrinkled t-shirt, hair deliberately messy, seemed annoyed by the crowd. "This is about fixing what's broken. The founders left us something worth saving."
A few yards away, Nathan Scott stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sarah James and his son, Tommy, the three of them pressed close to the rope line for a better view. Tommy, atypical of his fifteen years wearing a clean, open-collared shirt and ironed slacks, appeared the most eager.
Nathan glanced around, eyes searching for their missing friend who had said he would meet them there.
The crowd was large, loud, and almost entirely happy. At least for one morning, things would work out.
The assassin had chosen his perch after three weeks of reconnaissance. Twelve visits to the park in various disguises, at various hours, because professionals are thorough and amateurs get caught. He had studied the sight lines, the prevailing winds, the likely positions of security personnel, and the trajectory of the morning sun — because a glint off a scope at the wrong moment was the sort of career-ending mistake that tended to be fatal in more ways than one.
The pine tree at the outer edge of the park was perfect. Forty feet up, dense with late-summer foliage, invisible from the ground and from the air. He'd hauled his rifle up in pieces over several days, securing each component in a camouflaged bag lashed to the trunk.
The weapon was a Patriot Arms MR-12 — a compact, modular precision rifle built in Texas, favored by police marksmen and federal task forces who needed something that could be reconfigured in the field and carried without advertising itself. Chambered in .300 Blackout, it owned any target inside six hundred yards. With its quick-change barrel and rail-mounted glass, it was purpose-built for exactly this kind of work. And with subsonic loads, it stayed comfortably below the speed of sound, leaving the suppressor to do most of the talking.
He'd brought food, warm clothing, and a mountain climber's cable to keep himself anchored when he slept — because even assassins need their rest. The bodily functions he managed with the grim pragmatism his profession demanded. No trace. No evidence. No loose ends.
He was, in every measurable way, a thorough man.
The Secret Service, to their considerable credit, had done everything right.
The park had been selected precisely because it was a safe place. It offered no rooftops, no parking garages, no elevated structures from which a sniper might operate. They'd swept the grounds the day before, cleared the surrounding area, and positioned agents at overlapping intervals that left no gap in coverage. Metal detectors processed the incoming crowd. Bags were searched. Pat-downs were conducted on anyone, especially those whose looks they didn't like, and several whose looks they did.
A bulletproof transparent screen had been erected behind the podium, with two more panels flanking the teleprompters on either side. It was, by any reasonable standard, a fortress of protective glass and federal manpower. So long as POTUS was wedged between the layers.
The president, however, had insisted on a meet-and-greet in front of it. At least briefly, she had instructed. Because the American people needed to see her humanity, she'd explained. Because the American Restoration Act required their support. Because shaking hands and kissing babies was apparently non-negotiable, despite the assassination attempt of the year before, which one might have thought would have recalibrated her risk assessment somewhat.
Not this president. Fierce at heart, yet approachable. A dangerous combination.
The Secret Service had registered its objections through the appropriate channels. President Cander had listened carefully, weighed the concerns, and overruled them anyway. This, everyone agreed privately, was very on-brand.
Even the twenty trees in the surrounding area had been examined, thoroughly checked with binoculars from the ground and from helicopters above. To be fair, it was a solid check, by the book, but in hindsight, the kind of thing that gets written up in security manuals years later, under headings like 'Vulnerabilities We Did Not Anticipate'.
From his position forty feet up, wrapped in a camouflage tarp that made him effectively invisible to the helicopters circling overhead and the agents diligently scanning from below, the assassin watched the motorcade arrive with the calm detachment of a man who had rehearsed every possible scenario until nothing surprised him anymore.
The president emerged flanked by agents, the first gentleman at her side, moving toward the designated greeting area with the easy confidence of a woman who regarded her own security briefings as optional reading.
Wearing what the media had dubbed the presidential pantsuit collection, she had settled on cobalt blue, with a tailored blazer featuring the Presidential Seal emblazoned across the chest pocket. She smoothed it down with her hands, brushing back a strand of hair that had blown across her face.
The assassin settled the MR-12 against his shoulder and found her in his glass. Checked his sight line. Clear and clean. The party balloons showed it was nearly wind-still. He couldn't have hoped for better conditions.
He had no doubts about the rifle. He'd verified its accuracy to the edge of obsession, running subsonic loads through it until the margin of error was, for practical purposes, zero. One bullet — engineered to fragment on impact, to do its work quietly and completely. The suppressor would swallow most of the sound. By the time anyone understood what had happened, he'd be on the ground.
Two seconds on the cable. Blend into the crowd. Walk away.
He'd been paid well enough that anonymity no longer mattered. The gear left behind would eventually identify him, but by then, he would be long gone from the country. 'He tracked her through the scope as she worked the line—shaking hands, leaning for selfies, performing the ritual of pretending every stranger mattered. Balloons drifted lazily; the wind was near-still. Ideal conditions.
He drew a long breath. Let half of it out. His finger found the trigger.
She turned slightly, and the angle opened up exactly as he had calculated it would.
It was the infinite moment before action. He was ready to squeeze the trigger. Three. Two. One…
Something appeared that he could not yet see, passing outside the edge of the scope and rapidly moving toward the president.
A horse and rider in full gallop, blue Continental Army jacket flapping, hair tied back, eyes locked forward. Secret Service agents now shouting, weapons rising, but the moment had already slipped.
Just a blur; dark, fast, massive, filling the glass for a fraction of a second now, as he squeezed. The trigger broke.
The rider launched from the saddle, airborne over the president's head.
The round crossed the distance in a blink and fragmented on impact exactly as designed, tearing through muscle and tissue. Still, momentum carried the rider forward, and he came down hard, driving the president to the ground with his own body as Secret Service agents closed in from every direction.
From his perch, the assassin didn't wait to assess the result. He was already moving, hands finding the cable, feet pushing off from the branch, feet hitting the ground two seconds later. Then he was in the crowd, and the crowd swallowed him whole.
Behind him, a single voice cut above the noise with the particular shrillness of someone who had just witnessed history and deeply objected to it:
"My God, the president's been shot!"
