A novel by JD Eells
The HuntDuty of the Badge
A deadly fugitive.
A kidnapped girl.
A city on edge.
A fugitive team is running out of time.
The North Star Fugitive Team has hunted hundreds of fugitives like Micah Sayer in the past. But what begins as a fugitive case escalates into the kidnapping of the Minneapolis mayor’s daughter. Micah Sayer has a plan for the citizens of Minnesota, and everyone is watching. The team will be pushed to its limits, and time is running out.
- Jurisdiction
- Minneapolis–St. Paul
- Case window
- Eleven days
- Primary target
- Micah Sayer
- Status
- Felony arrest warrant
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The Hunt: Duty of the Badge
A grounded Twin Cities fugitive thriller by JD Eells.
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The warrant
An experienced fugitive team.
A city watching every move.
Nolan Rask’s team knows how to find people who do not want to be found. But this hunt is unfolding under relentless media scrutiny, political pressure, and a public already deciding who to blame.
But Sayer understands the same machinery. He feeds investigators facts that are true, points them toward people worth arresting, and lets lawful police work erase the trail behind him. By the time Nolan sees the pattern, a fatal encounter has turned the city against the team—and the Minneapolis mayor’s daughter has disappeared.
“The fugitive was at a house with a school on one side and a daycare on the other. Detective Nolan Rask shook his head. Impossible area for a takedown.”
Part I · The Warrant · Chapter One
The hunt widens · St. Paul
A manhunt through the frozen heart of Minnesota.
One priority warrant. Eleven days of bad information, political pressure, divided authority, and choices no clean ending can erase.
The pressure picture
One fugitive.
Three moving fronts.
The case spreads from snowbound surveillance vehicles to downtown ramps, family kitchens, City Hall, and the industrial edge of the Mississippi.
Micah Sayer
Violent, observant, and far more interested in controlling the story than disappearing from it. Sayer does not need secret technology. He needs frightened people and predictable institutions.
Useful arrests
Every tip produces something the police can act on. Every success also removes another person who could reconstruct the crime Sayer is trying to bury.
A city watching
A manipulated shooting becomes public evidence before investigators understand what happened. Then the mayor’s daughter vanishes, and every hour begins demanding a faster answer.
The jurisdiction problem
Two teams.
One fugitive.
North Star and the Minnesota State Fugitive Team are hunting the same man. Both units are capable. Both have lawful authority. Neither agrees on who should control the next move.
North Star Fugitive Team
Nolan’s unit works from surveillance, source development, and carefully timed arrests. Its patch carries the outline of Minnesota, with the North Star marking Hennepin County—the team’s home ground and primary jurisdiction.
Minnesota State Fugitive Team
A statewide unit with broader reach, formal command channels, and its own claim to the Sayer warrant. Its patch places the Great Seal of Minnesota at the center of a restrained statewide warrant-operations design.
Both organizations and their composite insignia are fictional. The public-domain Great Seal of Minnesota appears within the fictional MSFT patch and does not imply state endorsement.
North Star Fugitive Team
The people carrying
the weight.
A fictional joint fugitive team built around professional competence, conflicting judgment, dry humor, and the consequences that begin after the handcuffs close.
Nolan Rask
With seventeen years in law enforcement, Nolan leads North Star through the patience and pressure of fugitive apprehension. He is just as determined to stay present for his wife and son—even when the hunt follows him home.
Mara Vang
Mara carries incident command and the authority to slow a team when urgency starts becoming recklessness. Political pressure does not impress her, but consequence does.
Paige Dahlen
Paige refuses to make weak information sound strong. When every tip seems too useful, she is the first person willing to ask who benefits from the success.
Owen Nygaard
Quiet, capable, and accustomed to moving toward the danger. One lawful decision will leave Owen carrying a result no policy can make simple.
Jules Mercado
Jules can disappear into almost any Twin Cities parking lot and serves as the team’s EMT-certified medic. His humor buys everyone one clean breath before the job becomes serious again.
Ali Hassan
The team’s breacher, trusted with both the physical threshold and the warrant work behind it. Ali knows a forced entry begins with lawful authority, timing, and a clear lane—not the ram.
Ryan Miller
Ryan handles rifle overwatch and remote reconnaissance. He holds angles other people cannot see and uses the team’s camera robot to turn unknown rooms into usable information.
Kat Nelson
Steady on containment, hands-on arrests, and exterior overwatch, Kat adapts quickly when a clean box becomes something less predictable.
Inside fugitive work
The arrest is the shortest part of the hunt.
Grounded in the lived rhythm of fugitive investigations while keeping every agency, identity, and outcome fictionalized.
- 01
The waiting
Hours in an ordinary vehicle. A dark window. A routine that changes by half an inch. The work begins long before anyone sees the arrest.
- 02
The source
A tip can be accurate and still be a trap. Every useful fact carries a second question: who needed the police to act on it?
- 03
The collision
Two fugitive teams can be competent, lawful, and aimed at the same fugitive—and still disagree about ownership, timing, and risk.
- 04
The aftermath
Violence takes seconds. Interviews, medical care, public judgment, family exposure, and doubt remain long after the scene is cleared.
A novel by JD Eells
The most dangerous fugitive is the one who understands the hunt.
When Micah Sayer vanishes into the frozen Twin Cities, veteran detective Nolan Rask expects a difficult warrant. Then the Minneapolis mayor’s daughter is taken, the pressure turns political, and every useful lead begins to look placed.
Sayer is not merely running from the team. He is studying it—anticipating its movements, manipulating its successes, and deciding where the hunters will look next.