Before the Storm

The bestselling Amelia Storm series by multi-million bestselling author Mary Stone is finally back!

FBI Special Agents Amelia Storm and Rhea Cutter weren't supposed to meet like this.

Amelia Storm has just settled into Miami after leaving Chicago behind—a new city, a new field office, and her fiancé, Special Agent Zane Palmer at her side. It's a fresh start. One she's earned.

Rhea Cutter is hours from her first official day in the same office. A Miami native, a Quantico graduate, and a single mother with an eleven-year-old who can outthink her before breakfast. She's spending her last normal morning at the mall with her daughter.

Then the shooting starts.

Panic tears through Aventura Mall. People run. Hide. Fall. No one knows how many shooters. No one knows where the next shot is coming from.

Rhea and Amelia are on opposite sides of the building when everything breaks open. Amelia moves toward the threat.

Rhea loses her daughter in the chaos.

Every instinct screams at her to find her child. Her training says something else. And she knows exactly which one must win.

For Rhea, it’s a brutal introduction to the job she hasn’t even officially started. For Amelia, it’s a reminder that no matter where she goes, danger follows.

And for both of them, one truth becomes impossible to ignore.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Or it was?

Before the Storm is the gripping bridge novella that launches The Cutter Files—the next chapter of the Amelia Storm universe from bestselling author Mary Stone. Fast-paced, emotionally raw, and anchored in real-time tension, it introduces Special Agent Rhea Cutter in a moment that tests everything she's trained for and everything she loves most. For fans of intense FBI procedurals and character-driven suspense, this is where the next storm begins.