Sixteen year old Kate Beckett is engaging in a summer
vacation romance with Tommy Ibarra, a local boy who her
father does not approve of. After promising faithfully to
not see Tommy again, she is left one night to babysit her
younger brother Michael. Tommy comes over to see her; and
he and Kate sneak outside to neck. Michael is in Kate's
bedroom playing video games; where he is abducted and later
found murdered. After killing Michael, the kidnapper
commits suicide. The horror tears Kate's family apart; and
the ensuing guilt over not watching her brother as promised
tragically ends the summer romance.
Fourteen years later, Kate is an experienced child
kidnapping expert, and a children's advocate. She has been
called back to the small vacation retreat where Michael died
to investigate the abduction of another youth named Tricia.
Having not been there since her brother's death, being in
the small community again opens old wounds and guilt. Kate
desperately wants to find Tricia alive, and time is of the
utmost importance. An old friend from Kate's teen years,
John Burkhart, has put up a very large reward for
information leading to Tricia's return; and the deputy in
charge of the case is CJ, also an old friend. CJ brings in
a Security and Communication Specialist to aid in the
investigation, who just happens to be Kate's old flame Tommy
Ibarra. Tommy has never forgiven Kate for acceding to her
family's wishes to dump him; and the fact that her rich and
powerful father tried to ruin Tommy's future.
The case is eerily similar to another set of serial
kidnapping and murder cases, one which had been closed when
the supposed kidnapper committed suicide. As Kate and Tommy
investigate the kidnapping of Tricia, they are tentative and
distant. There has been a lot of pain in their past
together, and they are not completely comfortable with each
other. After spending so much time together, however, the
walls come down and the passion between them explodes. It
soon becomes apparent in their investigations that both the
new kidnapping and the old cases tie into Michael's
disappearance and murder. The race is on to find Tricia
before she is murdered, and to figure out the correlation
between these cases, and why they seem to have a peculiar
connection to Kate herself.
GUILTY AS SIN is a very interesting and intriguing
kidnapping/murder investigation; as well as a lovely second
chance at love story. Although the story is not tied to
Jami Alden's previous series, there are mentions of
characters from that series. The book is not listed as the
beginning of a new series, but does introduce a number of
characters begging for their own story. This is a very good
read, recommended to Alden's fans; as well as anyone wishing
to read a taut, well written Romantic Suspense story.
For over a decade, a killer has been waiting, silent as death and . . . GUILTY AS SIN Fourteen years ago, Kate Beckett was a teenager more interested in summer romance than babysitting. Then the unthinkable happened: her younger brother was kidnapped and murdered on her watch. Now she is an advocate for missing children, and her newest case brings her back to the small town where she lost her brother-and where she left behind the first boy she ever loved. Tommy Ibarra's world fell apart after Kate broke his heart, and he's spent his adult life making sure that he'll never be vulnerable again. When a teenage girl vanishes, he offers his expertise as a high tech security expert to help find her. Although he's determined to keep his distance from Kate, it isn't long before he's falling under her spell all over again. As they race against the clock, their investigation leads to a brutal killer with a shocking connection to Kate's tragic past. And this time, the killer has Kate firmly in his sites.
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