Gloria Milliner

His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes… Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition.

On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée—two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii. Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. It all brings back some bad memories for Eve.

Cady Briggs is useful to Mack Easton. Her expertise in art and antiques helps his low-profile company, Lost and Found, find missing treasures for high-paying clients. But Cady knows that being useful to a client is one thing—and being used is another. So no matter how alluring she finds Mack, she plans to keep business and pleasure entirely separate. But then a sudden tragedy puts Cady in charge of Chatelaine's, her family's prestigious art and antiques gallery. Suddenly the roles are reversed, as strange developments at Chatelaine's lead Cady to ask for help from none other than Mack Easton.