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Josie presses her hands into the center of the drowned girl’s chest and pumps, counting off compressions. She takes in the girl’s beautiful face, her brown eyes glassy. The memory of a champion swimmer on the podium with her teammates—a red swim cap on, her head thrown back in laughter—a stark contrast to the cold, still body before her. Breathe. Just breathe…

The body of a young girl lying face down in a swimming pool—white tennis shoes still on her feet, chestnut hair fanned out like a halo—is the last thing Detective Josie Quinn expects to find on an early morning visit to see her brother before class at Denton University. But when she recognizes the girl’s face as she drags her limp body from the water, there’s only one question racing through Josie’s mind: how does a champion swimmer accidentally drown?

Nysa Somers’ family is distraught. She was a model student, beloved daughter, and everybody’s friend. There’s no way she would do anything reckless enough to put her scholarship at risk, let alone her life. It’s up to Josie and her team to piece together what happened in the hours leading up to Nysa’s death, and that begins with finding her missing backpack.

But the bag, discarded in the woods on the nearby campus, contains nothing more than empty food wrappers, Nysa’s phone, and a cryptic calendar entry telling her to be a mermaid.

The next day, a terrible housefire envelops the nearby home of a retired fireman, nearly killing his two granddaughters. The last words the little girls heard him mutter before he set the blaze were, be a match.

As the body count rises, it’s only Josie who can see the deadly pattern forming. Can she convince her team that the wrapper found in Nysa’s bag that everyone overlooked is the crucial link they’re missing? Not while her partner, Noah, is avoiding her calls and acting so coldly towards her. Josie knows she must go it alone if she’s going to stop this silent and calculated serial killer before any more precious lives are taken.

But with the killer finally in her sights, Josie takes a deadly risk and finds herself hanging onto life by her fingernails. Can she trust her team to save her, and before it’s too late?

An unputdownable and totally gripping crime thriller from an Amazon, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Perfect for fans of Angela Marsons, Robert Dugoni, and Rachel Caine.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Her heart pounded so hard in her chest, it felt like each beat rattled her bones.

 

He had shaggy black hair that hung in hanks around his head. Almost like someone very angry had given him a haircut and quit in the middle of doing it.

 

He never knew the feeling of absolute power over someone’s life the way I did. He never knew what it felt like to right the wrongs people perpetrated against you. Making people pay was like heroin for my soul.

My Review:

 

This was brilliantly contrived, shrewdly paced, taut with tension, and fraught with confounding and chilling intrigue. I was afraid to blink for fear I’d miss something and profoundly resented having to put my Kindle down for a second. And judging from the stiffness in fingers, I may have been clutching it in a white-knuckled death grip throughout perusal. I had read book one before picking up this cunningly crafted missive and holy brain spasm Batman, so much as happened to Josie in the intervening four-years that it singed the little pea in my brain. I need to take out a second mortgage and borrow Herminie’s time turner so I can read the other eight books in between.

I soon discovered that between book one and book ten, Josie had acquired a previously unknown set of parents, a twin sister, a brother, a new love interest, and an adorable dog. She was still an epic trouble magnet, deeply flawed and stubborn stoic, and death-defying risk-taker; so not everything had changed. Every character, even those who appeared only briefly, was uniquely etched and curiously compelling if not enigmatic. I am hooked, bewitched, besotted, and totally enamored with this agile wordsmith and in awe of her deft wordcraft. Sigh, fangirling hard!