Born in El Paso to immigrant parents, Jaime F. Arias ("Jimmy" to his family) grew up in southern New Mexico. After spending his first twelve years in the rancheros of one of the world’s largest pecan farms, he moved with his family to nearby Las Cruces. He spent much of middle school trying to avoid fights—until an elementary-school friend, who had moved to town earlier, found him and became his protector.

Jaime didn’t thrive in school, but reading became his saving grace. He was more likely to be found in a quiet corner of the schoolyard with a good book than out causing trouble with friends. By high school, however, he found every excuse not to attend, and after the second week of his freshman year, counselors asked him to leave. Too afraid to tell his mother he’d been kicked out, he quietly earned his GED and enrolled in college—though it didn’t last. He later completed a building-trades program at the local community college.

Jaime gave his life to Christ at nineteen through his older sister, Lourdes. Not long after, he joined the Air Force as a security policeman. His first marriage ended, and he and his young son moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he became an instructor at the Security Police Academy. There, he met and married his current wife. After ten years, he left active duty and returned to school, earning a B.S. in Sociology from Regents College and an M.S. in Curriculum Development from New Mexico State University.

Jaime began writing during his six years teaching at an elementary school. What started as stress relief became a central part of his life and has produced six books in The Jacob Rico Series. His experiences shape his storylines and characters—composites of real people set in historical adventures, influenced by biblical events, and framed by his imagination. He hopes the culture and flavor of the U.S. Southwest are portrayed honestly, in both their strengths and their flaws.

Jaime lives in Las Cruces with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

The Jacob Rico Series is a seven-book Christian fiction series that blends high-stakes action, suspense, and romance with a powerful, faith-driven narrative. The series follows Jacob Rico, a twice-orphaned former Delta Force commando whose journey to faith reveals the boundless and enduring nature of God’s mercy—one that remains steadfast even in the face of profound loss and self-destructive choices. As Rico confronts the consequences of his past, it is through the influence of family, trusted relationships, and hard-earned connections that he begins to understand faith not as an escape, but as a call to reconciliation, redemption, and lasting transformation.

Jacob Rico: Chink in the Armor

Jacob Rico: POTUS Resurrection

Jacob Rico: Butterfly Rising

Jacob Rico: An Angel and a Matyr

Jacob Rico: The Days of Elijah

Jacob Rico: The Early Years

Orphaned, retired military, a brain-cancer survivor, and freshly divorced, Jacob Rico bolts from San Diego to Las Cruces, New Mexico, determined to propose to Joey Black—the blue-eyed, freckled Hispanic-Irish woman he once crossed paths within a combat zone and who has since uprooted her life from London. But Rico doesn’t come home alone. The voices are back—whispers and visions he blames on cancer, even as something colder and older seems to press in from the shadows. To drown out the noise, he resurrects a lean, nonprofit version of his old executive-protection outfit and names it NSA, Incorporated, daring fate to notice. High-risk clients begin to appear as if “random” referrals, yet patterns emerge—too precise, too timely—like bait set on a hook.

Two former Delta teammates—Jennifer Jordon and Rafael Azerra—re-enter Rico’s life, and a third figure, Joshua Cohen, an enigmatic ex-Mossad operative, steps into the circle with secrets Rico can’t read. Marriage and instant fatherhood should steady him, but the pressure only rises. Rico’s mind turns tactical and theological all at once: if the voices won’t stop, he’ll silence them—by force, by calculation, by a plan so reckless it feels like temptation dressed up as purpose. Backed by the unquestioning money of his royal friend, Prince Michael, Rico edges toward a politically explosive kidnapping, convinced it will end the torment and buy him peace.

Then the battlefield comes to him. In a federal courthouse parking lot, Rico takes three close-range hits and is pronounced dead in surgery. Joey refuses the verdict; she orders him moved to recovery and leans into prayer with a certainty that unsettles the staff. Hours later, Jennifer watches Rico seize a violent breath as his wounds close—impossibly—before her eyes. A miracle, Joey insists. A delusion, Rico insists. And that refusal to name what happened becomes its own doorway: the unseen war tightens around their home, their marriage, and Rico’s mission. If the voices are not sickness but a snare, his next move won’t just cost him his new family—it could deliver him straight into the enemy’s hands.

By all appearances, Jacob Rico is holding the line—managing his PTSD, thriving as Joey Black Rico’s husband, and learning to be a father figure to her two daughters: quiet, compliant Rosangelica (early twenties) and volatile, high-spirited Tina (teens). But the real fight is unseen. The voices in Rico’s head are no longer just echoes of trauma; they are demonic oppression, probing for a spiritual stronghold—an unhealed wound, a buried rage, a secret fear—to turn into a foothold.

Rico calls it strategy. Joey calls it the Enemy. She covers their home in prayer and still chooses to stand with him, while former teammate Jennifer Jordon is pulled in by the same adrenaline rush—and by Rico’s lie dressed as patriotism: a Virginia “collection” job that promises finder’s fees from Uncle Sam.

The money becomes fuel for treason, and temptation becomes a chain. On Thanksgiving Day, Rico moves to kidnap a powerful senator—only to discover the President-elect, Yanni Amat Sayud, has made an unannounced stop at the senator’s ranch. The Enemy whispers that this is providence, that God is “opening doors,” and Rico believes the counterfeit. Then everything fractures when the ranch comes under a real assault by unknown forces—an attack far beyond Rico’s delusion.

In the chaos, the senator is killed, and Rico flees with an unconscious Yanni in his armored vehicle—until his best friend, Oscar Villa, now a senior Secret Service agent, blocks the road. A brief standoff—and the discovery of an injured, fleeing Iranian operative—forces Oscar to realize there is a deeper plot in motion…and to let Rico disappear into the night with the future of the nation in his back seat.

Rico vanishes with the President-elect into a hidden refuge, and the nation fears her dead. For three days—long enough to feel like a burial—Joey wages war in prayer, fasting, watching for cracks in the stronghold tightening around her husband’s mind. Rico refuses to repent, refuses to name the darkness for what it is, and the oppression answers by sharpening his resolve.

At last, trusting Rico just enough to gamble for the country’s stability, Yanni agrees to break cover. With Rico’s improbable flying car as their escape and a rogue ally in an F-35 running interference, the “resurrected” President-elect lands at the White House’s East Gate—barely avoiding a rooftop missile. The near miss feels less like luck than mercy. But mercy doesn’t end the battle: it exposes it. Rico’s war is no longer only in his mind; it is a widening spiritual conflict that will demand a choice—deliverance or destruction—before it consumes everyone he loves.

When Rosangelica Rodriguez Black—Rico’s new stepdaughter and the child he has come to love like his own—vanishes in Mexico, the kidnapping feels less like crime than a targeted strike. Rico gears up for a one-man rescue, but the timing is wrong in ways that feel engineered: the 45th President, an old friend, calls to ask his help finding a senator’s missing daughter near Mexico City. Rico refuses—Rosangelica comes first—yet the refusal lands like a trap springing shut. Jennifer calls it spiritual warfare: a demonic ambush exploiting a father’s fear to open a stronghold. Rico calls it coincidence. The Enemy calls it leverage.

Behind Rico’s back, POTUS quietly unleashes resources that will later save his life. A stranger named Zeke—a former SEAL commander sent unofficially by a mutual friend—contacts Jennifer Jordon, who turns Rico’s home into a command center. Jennifer brings Delta Force precision, but she also recognizes the pattern of principalities at work—layers of deception, intimidation, and bloodshed designed to fracture faith. She rallies intercession, prays warfare prayers over maps and call signs, and asks God to expose every counterfeit lead. When a hacker traces Rosangelica’s pinging phone to a remote town deep in Mexico, Rico and Zeke move fast, feeling the pressure of unseen opposition as much as cartel guns. There is no rehearsal, no backup, and no room for doubt.

They hit the target—a small, former hospital—and find Rosangelica alive. But she refuses to leave without the other captives. When Rico dismisses her claim that an angel promised her protection, she points to a girl lying dead in a bed and demands Zeke pray anyway—deliverance, not comfort. He does—more to move her than from faith—until the corpse stirs. The miracle shatters Zeke’s skepticism and exposes the battle lines: the Enemy is not only trafficking bodies, but claiming souls. Rosangelica leads them room to room, gathering survivors, while a deep-cover DEA agent embedded with the cartel risks his life to get them out.

Then Rosangelica secures a helicopter and pilots it with unnerving skill, threading through gunfire and then missiles as if guided by heaven. When the missiles curve back to reacquire, black, unmarked aircraft draw them off and drive the pursuers away. A police helicopter later escorts her into U.S. airspace for a rooftop hospital landing—only then does Rico’s butterfly collapse, shaking. And while Rico clings to his daughter, Zeke quietly disappears with one rescued girl: the senator’s missing daughter POTUS asked Rico to find, confirming the Enemy’s net was wider than Rico feared—and the next strike is already in motion.

Item descJacob Rico’s life fractures when two discoveries force him to question his identity—and expose how much of his life has been ruled by survival, control, and buried fear.

A hidden compartment in his murdered father’s footlocker suggests his beloved “Papi” may have been an assassin—raising the terrifying possibility that Jacob’s orphaning wasn’t random. Then Israel confronts him with a second shock: hints that he may be of Jewish descent and not the biological son of the man who raised him. The ground under his story gives way, and for the first time Jacob can’t muscle his way back to certainty.

Before he can recover, Joshua Cohen leads him into the wilderness—where Jacob meets a man Cohen calls angelic and Jacob can’t explain. The stranger will not let him pass until Jacob accepts a shepherd’s staff Jacob has seen in a vision and agrees to carry it where he is told. The staff leaves him with a limp: a physical reminder that his old way—power, certainty, self-reliance—has limits.

In Jerusalem, Jacob is brought face-to-face with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He yields—accepting Christ and stepping into a life that demands repentance, obedience, and humility. The call doesn’t quiet the conflict; it intensifies it, because Jacob is no longer merely rebuilding a life—he is being remade.

Within days, obedience is tested. Jacob is sent on a Bible-smuggling mission into a hostile region he once knew as a soldier—this time armed only with faith. When the mission collapses and death closes in, another believer sacrifices to spare him, and Jacob is entrusted with protecting an endangered new convert: the village chief’s daughter. The escape leaves Jacob carrying grief, survivor’s weight, and a sharpened awareness that the war is spiritual as much as physical.

Jacob wants closure, but the staff—the Rod of Aaron—won’t let him retreat into “normal.” It becomes a commission he can’t explain and can’t ignore, forcing him to choose: obey God’s voice, or return to the illusion that he can manage his life by force of will.

Then his friend—the President—dies unexpectedly, and Jacob’s fragile path forward is shaken again. The grief is personal, but the fallout is public: suspicion resurfaces, and the doors he once walked through close. If God’s call requires him to deliver the rod to the new president, Jacob must do it as a changed man—without leverage, without clearance, and without the old habit of solving everything on his own terms.

Editing is currently in progress and will be added as they become available.