by Dani Pettrey
Part of Alaskan Courage
First published 2013
Darcy St. James gets the official story fast: her friend Abby left her cruise ship job voluntarily and moved on. Darcy does not believe it. She books herself onto the ship, takes the same role Abby held, and starts asking questions no one wants to answer. What she finds is worse than she expected. Abby was not the first. The previous summer, another woman disappeared from a cruise line under circumstances close enough to be a pattern. Someone is targeting crew members, and Darcy is now exactly where the last two victims stood. Gage McKenna is running adventure excursions for passengers at port stops along the same route. He knows Darcy, and finding her in the middle of a dangerous investigation surprises him. It also pulls him in. The two of them start digging together, and every answer they turn up points to something larger and more organized than a single disappearance. The further they go, the clearer it becomes that whoever is responsible knows the ship, knows the route, and may already know about them.
Genres: romance, suspense, mystery, adult, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, gripping, suspenseful, tense
Tropes: amateur-detective, danger-draws-them-together, forced-proximity, partners-in-crime-solving
Setting: cruise ship, port stops
344 pages · Paperback · Bethany House Publishers
Content warnings: kidnapping, trafficking, violence