Showing results by author "Meli Raine" in All Categories

I didn’t do it. I never betrayed my friend. Last year, I was kidnapped along with presidential candidate’s daughter Lindsay Bosworth, forced to help her assailants, my mother implicated in one of the biggest political scandals in American history. I've been cleared of any wrongdoing, but that doesn’t matter. Once you’re tried by the media, you’re guilty as sin. The truth doesn’t get the public’s attention. But shame? Shame sells. And everyone assumes you’re tainted.

When a mysterious job offer brings Carrie Myerson back to the town where her father was set up for a federal crime, she returns - to face a past more dangerous than she ever imagined. And a love more passionate than she ever dreamed. Drug crimes, kidnappings, set-ups and betrayal all unfold as Carrie and her ex-boyfriend, local police officer Mark Paulson, untangle the complicated web of deceit at the heart of her past.

Five years ago, Jane helped presidential candidate’s daughter Lindsay after an unspeakable crime. Now it’s Jane who stands accused, caught at the heart of a presidential candidate’s scandal that threatens her very life. As people in her life turn up dead, she swears she’s innocent, but forces around her continue to make her look like the betrayer - and possibly, the murderer. Can her bodyguard, Silas, save her? Better yet - can he trust her as the two fight an attraction that could put them both in danger? Or is Jane not who she seems?

This isn't how my life is supposed to end. Then again, a case of mistaken identity got me here. No one is ever who we think they are. Especially my kidnapper, a man whose entire life is designed to deceive. Powerful people want my rescuer to die. I'm just a lure. A pawn. An object. But objects hold meaning. Emotions attach themselves without logic. Like love. I now know that Duff will do everything to protect me. If he gets here in time. And if I can hold on long enough. Because my body can only handle so much. Pushed to the limits, it's finally giving out. Giving way.

It's not against any formal rule for us to sleep together. It is, however, strictly forbidden to have feelings for each other. I can't do one without the other at this point. Which means I am doomed. When you don’t know who you can trust, reality distorts, reformulating to meet whatever needs its masters demand. Just like me. Just like Kina. Except everything is different now that we know who we really are. But there’s a second reality. This one can’t be manipulated. Solid and true, it takes our mission, our training, our orders, turning them into nothing but secrets and lies.

The future isn’t real. The past isn’t real, either. Only the present is, solid and full, flying at our faces, our bodies, our hearts and souls at breakneck speed as we work to take it all in. As we work to protect others. And, finally - ourselves. We’ve started to break the bonds of Stateless, a system as rotten as the one it seeks to destroy. But systems are organisms with one brutal goal: to survive, whatever it takes. Kina has to do the unfathomable to save a different system, one she created out of empathy and love for children we rescued from the only home they know.

Turns out there was a second video from that awful night four years ago. Mine wasn't the only tape. Too bad mine wasn't the worst. Drew can’t protect me no matter how hard he tries, but the roles are flipped now. I have to help him, but I’m not wired that way. Not anymore. Three men think they’re above the law. They’re right. But I’m willing to go beneath the law to make sure they never harm anyone else. Their threats don’t scare me. When you have nothing left to lose because someone took it all away, you create the most dangerous creature imaginable: me. Game over.

I did it. I admit it. I fell in love with Silas. My bodyguard. My protector. My new informant. We’re playing a cat-and-mouse game. I’m not sure whether I’m the cat or the mouse, but I can definitely tell I’m in a trap. A trap with no way out. I’m not who everyone thought I was. The truth is out there, finally turning the lie about me inside out. I am the shameless little lie. It’s finally been revealed, and now even more people want to kill me.

On a rainy night, I drove my overstuffed junker car back to a town I never expected to see again. And when I needed a rescue by the side of the road, a six-foot-tall piece of hot, unfinished business named Mark was what the universe sent me. Three years earlier, I’d fled town (and Mark) to follow my wrongly convicted father to his federal prison, working crappy jobs to stay afloat and visit him every second I could. But now, Dad’s dead, and I’m mysteriously offered the best job of my life at the college where his life blew up when he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit.

I'm a prisoner at the Atlas motorcycle club compound. Someone kidnapped me, and it looks like it's Chase. No one knows I'm here. Then again, I'm no one, right? No mother, no stepfather, and my sister may have been kidnapped, too. They can make me disappear. Or worse. It turns out there are worse things than disappearing. I thought Chase was my only hope. Now he turns out to be my worst nightmare. Something flickers in his eyes, though.