Rating: 2 stars
After her husband Aaron dies, Ruby Monroe went to Iraq as a bus driver for an independent contractor, DeserTek, to make enough money to provide for her 4-year-old daughter, Zoe. After being away for a year, Ruby returns to Dallas anxious to see her sister, Misty, and her little girl, but they weren’t at the airport to meet her.
Ruby tries to call Misty, but her phone has been disconnected. To make matters worse, her backpack is stolen, which contained a flash drive holding evidence of DeserTek’s illegal and unethical practices. Pulling herself together, Ruby rents a car but upon arriving home she find a very large, angry tattooed man waving a gun. Ruby’s neighbor, bad-boy Sam McCoy, tries to help, but then the shooting starts – just before the house explodes into flames.
With her house a pile of rubble, Ruby stays with her best friend Elysse, only to come home and find her brutally murdered on the kitchen floor. However, Ruby finally gets a call from the kidnapper, who is willing to trade Ruby her family for the DeserTek flash drive –which she longer has. If that isn't bad enough, there is a possibility that the local sheriff is in on it. Desperate to find her family and not sure who to trust, Ruby has only Sam to turn to. Together Sam and Ruby must figure out a way to recreate the missing flash drive in order to fool the kidnapper into returning Ruby’s family. Sam, already on probation for previous computer crimes, must walk a fine line between helping his foster brother’s widow, keeping himself out of jail and keeping his feelings for Ruby to himself.
I don’t want to sound mean, but the book just didn’t grab me. It’s an OK story with OK characters, but there was nothing about any of it that made me care. I was more interested in finding out if Ruby nailed Sam rather than if she finds her sister and daughter. By the time I was two thirds of the way through the book, I really didn’t care if she ever found them; I just wanted it to be over.
And now it is.
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Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Love Spell (May 26, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-0843962437