"action-packed suspense thriller"

Banker Kayla Shaw has a simple normal career until she is assigned Andre Bertone as her client. Looking over his account, a stunned Kayla concludes that this VIP customer is a dangerous criminal not to mess with. When she is ordered to make illegal transfers of millions of dollars, Kayla realizes she is caught between a rock and a hard place. If she fails to do so she is dead; if she does so and is caught she goes to jail.

St. Kilda Consulting persuades former field operative Rand McCree to handle a special case involving the mystery Siberian, whom he wants to stop before others are harmed by this vicious brilliant thug. He learns that the Siberian is now using the identity of Andre Bertone, so he agrees to attend undercover an art exhibition hosted by this vicious killer. Kayla realizes her only Hail Mary escape is to bet her heart is right and that Rand can expedite her safely while initiating the risky strategy that St. Kilda is employing to bring down Bertone the Siberian.

This is an action-packed suspense thriller that never slows down once Kayla realizes what she is involved in. The lead couple is a super pairing as she is a woman in deep trouble that sees the tainted hero as her only knight in not so shiny dented armor; he has his own ghosts to deal with starting with witnessing the assassination of his twin brother. Readers will root for this couple to survive and make it, but the wintry Siberian steals the tale as few villains are as bad as this killer is with a heart that's cold as he seems to have the golden touch.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 25, 2008

First Time in Paperback

Summary

One day Kayla Shaw was an underpaid and under-appreciated private banker in Arizona. The next day, someone tried to kidnap her.

One day Rand McCree was painting daffodils in the Pacific Northwest rain. The next day, St. Kilda Consulting offered him something he'd wanted for five years: the name of his twin brother's murderer.

Kayla had nowhere to turn, nowhere to run, no one to believe that she wasn't a money launderer hiding hundreds of millions of dollars.

She was trapped.

Until Rand McCree appeared, offering safety. For a price.

Kayla didn't want to trust him, but had no real choice. No police would believe that she had been set up, that she was innocent. And no civilian alone could stand against the international criminal who wanted her dead.

Even her own government was suspect.

Rand trusted Kayla as much as he trusted anybody—not much—but what he really wanted was revenge for his brother's death. Everything else came last.

Then the man who had killed Rand's brother sent a killer after Kayla Shaw. The violence of the past exploded into the present, leaving only a future that might be too dangerous to survive....