This electric cross-country thriller follows the game of cat and mouse between a girl on the run from a murder she witnessed—or committed?—and the boy who’s sent to kill her.
Nicolette Holland is the girl everyone likes. Up for adventure. Loyal to a fault. And she’s pretty sure she can get away with anything...until a young woman is brutally murdered in the woods near Nicolette’s house. Which is why she has to disappear.
Jack Manx has always been the stand-up guy with the killer last name. But straight A’s and athletic trophies can’t make people forget that his father was a hit man and his brother is doing time for armed assault. Just when Jack is about to graduate from his Las Vegas high school and head east for college, his brother pulls him into the family business with inescapable instructions: find this ruthless Nicolette Holland and get rid of her. Or else Jack and everyone he loves will pay the price.
As Nicolette and Jack race to outsmart each other, tensions—and attractions—run high. Told in alternating voices, this tightly plotted mystery and tense love story challenges our assumptions about right and wrong, guilt and innocence, truth and lies.
Jack’s father was a hitman, and his brother has the same shady associates, but Jack has always tried to stay on the straight-and-narrow. Now, however, his brother has summoned him to prison and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he needs to find a girl who has disappeared—a girl who has murdered one of his associates—and murder her—or else both Jack’s brother and their mother may be in danger. Nicolette is the girl Jack is chasing. She is definitely running from something, although perhaps not what Jack thinks she is running from. Jack and Nicolette tell the stories in alternating chapters. Nicolette is desperate, changing her name, changing her appearance, working whenever she can, always on the lookout for her chasers. Jack is methodical, tracking Nicolette, and always trying to figure out how he can get rid of her without, you know, actually killing her. Inevitably, the two meet up, but things do not proceed as either of them expects.
This fast-paced novel is an amalgam of thriller, romance, mystery, and road-trip. The characters—including minor characters—are nicely drawn and the whole thing will keep readers turning the pages to find out what happens.
