"First came the floods. And then the bodies . . . " Alexandra Ivy’s new book, Pretend You’re Safe, begins as Jaci Patterson rises early to deliver her peach tarts and blueberry muffins to the Bird’s Nest cafe. Jaci has recently moved back to her family farmhouse near Heron, Missouri. A recent college graduate, she’s determined to cobble together an independent life by baking for businesses around town and selling handcrafts in her workshop out back. While dropping off the pastries, she hears the news: A woman’s decomposed body and a human skull have floated into the neighbor’s field behind her house.
Jaci is stunned and instantly thrust back in time. When she was 16, someone left a golden locket and a blood-stained ribbon on her porch swing. The locket had human hair inside. Terrified, she went to the authorities, but the two young men working in the sheriff’s department, Mike O’Brien and Rylan Cooper, assumed she was looking for attention. The lockets kept arriving for two years, and Jaci was convinced they were from a serial killer.
Now, 10 years later, someone has begun stalking and tormenting Jaci again. Though Mike and Rylan never took her seriously before, they have no choice when a new locket shows up, bodies emerge and new victims are added to the list.
Rylan Cooper, Jaci’s longtime neighbor and crush, finds himself intensely attracted to her. He’s since become a security company mogul in California, but since he didn’t take Jaci’s fears seriously in the past, Jaci’s not sure if she can forgive him.
Rylan tries to keep Jaci safe with elaborate security systems. Handsome Sheriff Mike O’Brien uses every investigative tool he can get his hands on. It soon becomes clear that neither of these alpha males can keep Jaci safe. They’re up against a brilliant and sadistic adversary who taunts them and knows how to cover his tracks.
Pretend You’re Safe is a pulse-raising romantic thriller. The romance sizzles, the vivid characters are engaging from page one, and readers will be frantically awaiting their rescue as the drama reaches its climax.
