A helpful stranger or a deadly trap?When Alice Layne doesn’t receive her daily phone call from her grandmother, she knows something is off. Finding her murdered on the kitchen floor, a butcher knife sticking out of her back, is horrifying enough. The note promising to do the same to her if she doesn’t give the psychopath a mysterious necklace is the icing on the cake... moreA helpful stranger or a deadly trap?When Alice Layne doesn’t receive her daily phone call from her grandmother, she knows something is off. Finding her murdered on the kitchen floor, a butcher knife sticking out of her back, is horrifying enough. The note promising to do the same to her if she doesn’t give the psychopath a mysterious necklace is the icing on the cake. Before she can even get a chance to call the police Christian Jackson, her grandmother’s mysterious next-door neighbor swoops in and offers to help. Alice is tempted to rely on the big, brooding man, but is Christian a white knight or the sinister puppet master pulling the strings?Christian learned early in life never to trust anyone. Love is for fools. That mantra has kept him alive. Until Maude Layne came into his world. She’d taken one look at his dirty, starving, ten-year-old self and given him a job at her corner grocery store. He’d known kindness and respect for the first time in his life. And now he’s making it his mission to avenge her death. He hadn’t counted on the beautiful Alice showing up and putting herself square in the crosshairs of the murderer. Ensuring her safety might just prove to be the easy part. Keeping his hands off her? Now that’s damned challenging. less
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