Release alert for THE SURVIVING GIRLS!
“This is a must read summer read!” —Book Him Danno
“Robert takes the story to an unexpected revelation of who the real
killer is and the trip there is highly entertaining in a hang on to your chair
kind of way. Every Robert book I’ve read has been filled with well defined,
gritty characters and a well-paced plot. The women aren’t Cinderallas and the
Princes Charming have an edge to them. Just the way I like it.” —Jeep
Diva
Download THE
SURVIVING GIRLS or add it
to your TBR pile on Goodreads! Then
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Amazon gift card or books from Katee Robert!
Title: The Surviving Girls
Author: Katee Robert
Series: Hidden Sins #3
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date:
May 29, 2018
Publisher: Montlake
Romance
Print Length:
282 pages
Format: Digital and Paperback
ISBN: 978-1503902442
Synopsis:
A fierce survivor and a fearless FBI agent battle a copycat
serial killer in a gripping thriller from New York Times and USA
Today bestselling author Katee Robert.
Twelve
years ago, Lei Zhang and her friend Emma Nilsson miraculously lived through the
notorious Sorority Row Murders that left twenty-one of their sisters dead.
Still wrestling with the trauma but finally out of the limelight, Lei and Emma
are now devoted to helping other victims find closure. But most disturbing for
Lei—beyond the gut-wrenching survivor guilt—is that the killer was her
boyfriend. He’s behind bars, but she’ll never lower her guard again.
When
a copycat killer targets Lei and Emma, FBI Agent Dante Young is put in charge
of anticipating the sociopath’s every move. But what he doesn’t expect is his
immediate and overpowering attraction to Lei. The closer they get to each
other, the more desperate and terrifying the questions become: Who wants to
finish what the killer started—and why?
Now Agent Young vows to protect Lei at all costs. If they have
any chance of a future together, first they have to stay alive…
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The Surviving Girls Excerpt
Copyright © 2018 Katee Robert
Lei
couldn’t breathe. Her chest closed painfully as if she’d been knocked flat on
her back, and her lungs burned with the need for oxygen. Somewhere in the tiny
rational corner of her mind, she knew there was nothing really
wrong with her, but rational thought had no place in the midst of her panic.
He’s back. Emma was
right all along and he’s coming for us.
Stop.
You’re spiraling.
Travis Berkley is
still in jail. This is a copycat, and no matter how bad a copycat is, he can’t
be worse than Travis. You survived before. You will this time, too.
A whine cut through her thoughts, and then
Saul was there, nudging her hand with his cool nose. She inhaled sharply,
suddenly aware that everyone in the room was staring at her. The Feds had the
blank-slate expression she’d come to associate with cops when they were in a
difficult situation. Emma looked at her as if she was on the verge of her own
panic attack.
Lei stroked her hand over Saul’s head,
forming a wall of indisputable facts in her mind to keep the fear at bay. She
wasn’t twenty-one anymore, only a couple of years out of the stifling family
home she’d grown up on, still drunk on freedom and the realization that she
could do anything she wanted to with her future.
She’d been an idiot. A child who was
playing dress-up without realizing the pitfalls of adulthood.
Though most pitfalls
don’t come attached to a knife.
Lei wasn’t that girl anymore. She’d seen
the worst Travis Berkley could offer and had the scars to show for it. She
could shoot. She could fight. She’d worked with enough cops over the course of
her career as a trainer and search team that she had an inside view to how
their minds worked.
She would not
lose herself to terror.
Another stroke to Saul’s head and she was
able to speak. “How close to the original murders are the details?”
Agent Young exchanged a glance with his
partner and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. His big hands
dangled between his legs, and she distantly noted that he had really firm
thighs beneath the expensive slacks. He spoke slowly, as if gauging her
response. “We haven’t had a chance to check the original case files, but the
big details are almost identical. The murders were performed in the same
way—girls kept in a main room and taken out individually. We think he snuck in
through a window, because their condo was on the second floor and he used a
knife from the kitchen.”
She could almost hear Travis’s voice in
her head, even after all these years. Let me in, Lei-Lei. I
have a surprise for you. Stupid. She’d been so incredibly stupid, swayed
by a pretty face and a boy her parents would approve of who made her feel. Smart, athletic, the right dollar amount in his
family’s bank account. Someone bright and colorful and checking all the right
boxes.
Since she couldn’t bring herself to ask if
one of the girls let him in, she focused on the rest. “If this is a fan, he
must have been in contact with Travis at some point.” She put her hand on
Emma’s leg when her friend flinched at his name. The Feds didn’t react, which
made her sigh. “But you already knew that. You don’t need me telling you how to
do your job. What is it you need?”
Another loaded look between them. They’d
obviously been partners for a long time, because they managed to convey an
entire conversation’s worth of talking in a single look.
Again, it was Agent Young who took the
lead. “We can find the details of the case easily enough, along with your
accounts, but what I’d like to know is your take on Travis.”
“Because I dated him.” She stated it
baldly, as if the fact she’d slept with a murderer was something she’d dealt
with and moved on from. As if the fact didn’t still keep her up at night,
moving beneath her skin until she wanted to take a wire brush to her body.
There weren’t enough hot showers and bleach baths in the world to change the
fact she’d willingly been with him. She could never take that back.
“Because you—both of you—have known him
longer than anyone.”
“Agent Young—”
“Dante.”
She stopped short. Dante.
It fit him somehow—strong and a little bit intense. He masked it well, but
there was fire lurking in the depths of his dark eyes, in the way he clenched
his fists as they spoke about Travis. She shouldn’t be forming personal
opinions about any man, let alone one connected with the case. Lei’s track
record had more than proven that fact.
While she was still trying to process her
strange and seriously inconvenient reaction to him, Emma had found her voice.
She spoke softly, her southern accent giving her breathy tone a pretty lilt.
She had a Dolly Parton thing going for her—at least before Dolly got a little
crazy for plastic surgery—and Emma wasn’t above playing up the
sweet-southern-belle thing when it suited her. “Travis Berkley is a sociopath
with a healthy dose of narcissistic personality disorder—which you already know
because you read the file. Everything is in the
file. We have been doing our best to get past what he did to us—to our
sisters—and that means forgetting as much as possible.”
Maybe for Emma.
Lei couldn’t afford to forget. It had been her mistake that tipped the first
domino that destroyed so many lives. While it was possible Travis could have
gotten into the house on his own, she’d been the fool who let him in her
window.
The knowledge made her hands shake. Emma
might want to do everything to avoid that gory walk down memory lane, but Lei
didn’t have that option. Guilt wrapped around her throat, tightening, ever
tightening. “You have something specific you’re here for.”
Agent Rowan leaned forward, a clear
indication that she’d take it from there. As much as Lei wanted the calming
force Dante—Agent Young—seemed to emanate, she turned almost gratefully to the
redhead. She eyed her as if Lei was a particularly interesting bug. “We’re
theorizing this fucker—”
“Clarke.”
She didn’t look at him. “These women have
seen enough, Dante. You know as well as I do that a few choice curse words
aren’t going to have them scrambling for their sniffing salts.”
Lei understood now why Britton had paired
these two together. Clarke was the blunt force designed to set a person back on
their heels so they were too busy reacting to her foul mouth to stop and think
that there might be a shrewd mind behind those deceptively big blue eyes. Dante
on the other hand, was a cool summer mist, unruffling feathers and putting
everyone in the room at ease with his calm presence. Both agents would be
underestimated in different ways, which was only to their benefit.
Clever.
She eyed the dogs on the floor. Neither of
them seemed overly concerned with the Feds in the room. Good.
Lei had more than proven she could be fooled, but Saul couldn’t. Every time he
reacted poorly to a person, she paid attention—and most of the time something
eventually came to light to prove her dog’s instincts correct.
Clarke followed her gaze and then
refocused on Lei and then Emma. “A lot of sociopaths think they’re smarter than
everyone else in the room—some of them are even right—and Travis sure as hell
falls into the latter category. His IQ is 167, and from all accounts, prison
hasn’t broken him. What we need to know is if he’d encourage a fan to take
these steps.”
“Of course he would. He’s a fucking
psycho,” Emma snarled.
“What do you think?” Clarke was looking at
Lei.
Because why not?
Even now, cops thought Lei had some kind of inside track to the way Travis’s
mind worked. She’d dated him for months, had slept with him countless times,
and so she must have some insider knowledge to explain how the golden boy went
so very, very wrong.
She hadn’t been able to give them a
satisfactory answer then. She didn’t have one now, either. But she could try.
Praise
for The Hidden Sins Series
“…a captivating read, made all the more rewarding when good triumphs.” —Washington
Post on The Devil’s Daughter
“Robert
shows off her impressive versatility in this fast-paced and inventive new
Hidden Sins series. The small-town setting is a masterful blend of quaint and
oppressive, which ratchets the menace and thrill factor. The protagonists carry
the full weight of their pasts with them, making their growing relationship as
compelling as the mystery element in The Devil’s Daughter. With
plenty of twists and betrayals, this is a book that is sure to earn Robert a
wealth of new fans.” —RT Book Reviews on The Devil’s Daughter
"Katee
Robert has definitely picked up the romantic suspense genre and made it her
bitch. I can’t wait to see what we get next. Given some of the books I see
she’s been using for research, I know it’s going to be frightening and amazing
at the same time." —Goodreads Review
“Every bit
as complex as book one but with a totally different storyline, The
Hunting Grounds once again proved Katee Robert is more than capable of
spinning a thrilling romantic suspense tale that will keep readers on their
toes.” —Harlequin Junkie on The Hunting Grounds (recommended read)
“Filled
with suspense and lot of unpredictable twists and turns…Gripping.” —Life
at 17on The Hunting Grounds
Other Books in the
Hidden Sin Series
THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER
THE HUNTING GROUNDS
About Katee Robert
New
York Times and USA
TODAY bestselling author Katee Robert learned to tell her stories at her
grandpa’s knee. Her 2015 title, The Marriage Contract, was a RITA finalist, and
RT Book Reviews named it 'a compulsively readable book with just the
right amount of suspense and tension." When not writing
sexy contemporary and romantic suspense, she spends her time playing imaginary
games with her children, driving her husband batty with what-if questions, and
planning for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
Connect with Katee at: Website | Facebook | Twitter| GoodReads | Instagram
