When they infiltrate the compound they find Laura there, and rescue her. Eighteen months later he’s part of a team sent to capture Abu Nayef Al-Nassar, the leader of an al Qaeda splinter group. Javier feels guilty and grief-stricken despite only knowing her (and knowing her) for a weekend. Later Laura and her TV crew are attacked on live television, and she’s taken hostage and presumed dead. They have the aforementioned sex, which they agree is no strings attached, and then go their separate ways. She meets Javier Corbray, a SEAL, when he’s on leave in Dubai. Laura Nilsson is a journalist, reporting on the war in the Middle East. Lots of delicious, illicit sex in a Dubai hotel room. First Strike does a good job of setting the tone of the relationship between the hero and heroine, Javier and Laura, and I felt it helped me appreciate their journey later. It’s been periodically featured for free, so it’s worth checking out.

I recommend reading First Strike, the prequel novella to Striking Distance first.

If someone told me “it’s a book where a reporter is kidnapped by al Qaeda and then rescued by her former lover who’s also a Navy SEAL, but it’s, you know, believable,” I would have said “ Shhhhhahhhh, no way.” And I would have been wrong.Ī word of advice. Even Liam Neeson can’t pull that shit off convincingly. I mean, people do not fall in love with their exes while on the run from a serial killer/drug warlord/human trafficking ring. I love romantic suspense, but it tends to require I do a lot of disbelief suspending. I also learned that it is possible to have a romantic suspense book that is feels entirely authentic and real. Today I learned that if you ground up a mouse and ate it, it would contain about 57% protein (this from our vet, I am not Googling “mouse protein content”). I love being surprised and learning new things.

Striking Distance by Pamela Clare