"Bestseller Rose makes her hardcover debut with this intricately plotted romantic thriller, a sequel to Die for Me(2007). Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Daniel Vartanian, having recently buried his parents, who were done in by his late serial-killer brother, Simon, looks into a series of killings that appear to copycat the brutal rape and murder of Alicia Tremaine 13 years earlier. In the course of his investigation, Daniel meets Alex Fallon, an attractive nurse who asks him to help locate her hairdresser stepsister, Bailey Crighton, who's mysteriously disappeared. In a twist, Alex turns out to be Alicia's twin sister. The romance between Daniel and Alex intensifies along with the suspense as the body count rises. This chilling novel will leave Rose's fans breathlessly anticipating her next release." —Publishers Weekly
Arcadia, Georgia, Sunday, January 28, 4:05 p.m.
“Welcome back, Danny-boy,” Daniel Vartanian murmured to himself as he got out of his car and surveyed the scene. He’d only been gone two weeks, but it had been an eventful two weeks. It was time to get back to work, back to his life. Which in Daniel’s case meant the same thing. Work was his life, and death was his work.
Avenging death, that was. Not causing it. He thought of the past two weeks, of all the death, all the lives destroyed. It was enough to drive a man insane, if he let it. Daniel didn’t intend to let it. He’d go back to his life, finding justice for one victim at a time. He’d make a difference. It was the only way he knew to … atone.
The victim this day was a woman. She’d been found in a ditch on the side of the road which was now lined with law enforcement vehicles of all shapes and functions.
The crime lab was already here, as was the ME. Daniel stopped at the edge of the road where someone had strung yellow crime scene tape and peered down into the ditch where the body lay, a tech from the ME’s office crouched by her side. She’d been wrapped in a brown blanket which had been pulled away just enough to do the exam. Daniel could see she had dark hair and was perhaps five foot six. She was nude and her face was … damaged. He’d lifted one leg over the tape when a voice stopped him.
“Stop, sir. This area is off limits.”
Straddling the tape, Daniel looked over his shoulder to where a young, earnest-faced officer stood, one hand on his weapon. “I’m Special Agent Daniel Vartanian, GBI.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Vartanian? You mean – I mean – ” He took a breath and straightened abruptly. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
Daniel nodded, giving the young man a kind smile. “I understand.” He didn’t like it, but he did understand. The name Vartanian had gotten quite a bit of publicity in the week since his brother Simon’s death, none of it good. “Where can I find the sheriff?”
The officer pointed about forty feet down the road. “That’s Sheriff Corchran.”
“Thanks, officer.” Daniel pulled his leg back over the tape and started walking again, conscious of the officer’s eyes following him. In two minutes everyone here would know a Vartanian was on the scene. Daniel hoped he could keep the hubbub to a minimum. This wasn’t about him or any other Vartanian, it was about that woman lying in the ditch wrapped in a brown blanket. She had family somewhere, people who would be missing her. People who would need justice and closure to get on with their lives.
Daniel had once thought justice and closure to be the same thing, that knowing a perpetrator had been caught and punished for his crimes closed the book on a painful chapter in the lives of the victims and their families. Now, hundreds of crimes, victims and families later, he understood that every crime created a ripple effect, touched lives in ways that could never be measured. Simply knowing evil had been punished wasn’t always enough to move on. Daniel knew all about that, too.
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Karen Rose bestselling author