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Charlotte Wilson owns and operates a travel services company now, on the straight and narrow for the last eighteen months. But, she hasn’t always been that way. For years, she and her estranged husband Sam Young worked as a team on cruise ships, duping and bilking wealthy travelers of jewelry and cash with extraordinary expertise using charm and subterfuge. Charlotte left that world when Sam bailed on her, leaving her in a lurch where she barely avoided prison. Now he’s reaching out to her for help with ominous messages, asserting someone was blackmailing him. She’s also beginning to receive the same threats and when she accepts an assignment on a private yacht excursion, those same threats follow her onto the ship. Is it Sam or someone else?

The story is told from Charlotte’s point of view, transitioning between the past and present to define who she was, now is and her relationship with Sam. It was always clear that someone was threatening her but was she being harassed or hunted? If so, was it by supposedly missing Sam or one of their marks from the past? I wasn’t even sure how I felt about Charlotte. At times, I was sympathetic, at others maybe she deserved what was happening to her. But she most certainly had changed her ways so maybe she deserved redemption because she was just as talented in her second life as she was in her first.

This was a long, slow smolder of a psychological thriller that kept me on my heels almost until the very end. When Charlotte took that yacht assignment, it became like a locked room mystery with no shortage of suspects. Even though I pinpointed the probable suspect early on, it was still highly enjoyable because I didn’t quite figure out everything. The locales along the way are exotic, adding a lot of flavor to the story. I listened to the book and the narrator was simply wonderful. Her interpretation of Charlotte further complicated my feelings about her because she gave her so many dimensions. And, she had me distrusting everyone through Charlotte’s eyes. Settle in for a fascinating journey because it was worth that ending.

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(Thanks to Harlequin Audio for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.)