Killing Time

Bestseller Gerard (Last Man Standing) works her successful formula of sexy special ops heroes and romantic suspense in this middling stand-alone. CIA attorney Eva Salinas needs to know what happened on the botched black ops mission in Afghanistan that killed her husband. Only ex-operative Mike Brown has the answers. Baffling the reader, Eva tracks Mike to a foreign country, lures him to a hotel room, drugs him, ties him up, and questions him at gunpoint. Considering his abduction and Eva’s story of a mysterious flash drive of classified files, Mike thinks Eva is nuts—until someone tries to kill them both. Danger-fueled romantic tension heats up as an investigation leads them to a sprawling international conspiracy linking American survivalist militias, Mexican cartels, and the Taliban. Sizzling chemistry will allow readers to forgive some rather contrived plot developments. (Feb.)