A vacation in paradise turns into a nightmare with only one rule: survive long enough for someone to find you. Adam Collins comes to Puerto Vallarta believing distance can fix what Chicago could not. Burned out, newly untethered from the architecture firm he helped build, and desperate for quiet, he plans to spend two weeks drinking cold beer, walking the waterfront, and figuring out what comes next. For a few brief days, it almost works. Then one wrong turn on a quiet street changes everything. Three_Minutes_BN_Publishable.docx None Dragged into a van and taken to a hidden concrete room somewhere beyond the city, Adam becomes the centerpiece of a brutal ransom operation run by men who have done this before. Cut off from the world, chained to a wall, and given only fragments of information, he is forced to do the one thing he has never been good at: surrender control. But Adam is not built to collapse easily. As the hours stretch into days, he begins using the only tools he has left-observation, discipline, memory, and the architect's instinct to read structure even inside terror. Three_Minutes_BN_Publishable.docx None Back in the United States, Adam's sister Rachel refuses to believe he has simply disappeared. With the help of Marcus Webb, Adam's former business partner, and intelligence analyst Joel Byrd, she begins pushing through layers of bureaucracy, cartel reality, and political obstruction to find out who took him and why. What they uncover is bigger than a random kidnapping. It is a system of money, fear, timing, and human calculation where three minutes can become the difference between rescue and ruin, hope and grief, life and death. Three_Minutes_BN_Publishable.docx None Set between Puerto Vallarta, Chicago, and the shadow world of organized criminal negotiation, Three Minutes is a tense, emotionally grounded thriller about captivity, survival, family, and the unbearable weight of tiny windows of time. Dark, sharp, and relentlessly human, it is perfect for readers who like kidnapping thrillers, cartel suspense, psychological pressure, and stories where endurance matters as much as action.