I picked up Cold Deceit after a friend recommended it in response to our Road Trip and Travel blog and I’m so glad that I did! It’s a romantic suspense with a cultural anthropologist and an FBI agent and they travels through a beautiful but dangerous area of southern Arizona. There is suspense, adventure and romance and I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through!

Zoe is a cultural anthropologist who volunteers with three friends that spend their spare time searching for the remains of people who have died in the desert and returning them to their families.  Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is a dangerous place because of drug cartels and migrant crossings. On Zoe’s last day before moving to Richmond, Virginia, where she has accepted an academic position, she discovers a woman’s remains along with a medallion and a tooth. She takes photos and marks the location, so the body can be recovered later.

When Zoe and her friends return to town for dinner, she and Seth set eyes on each other for the first time and like what they see! She’s a petite, dust-covered blonde and Seth thinks she’s beautiful. She melts when he smiles at her. It’s been a while since her last disastrous relationship and Seth looks like just her type!

Seth is an FBI hostage rescue team operator working with Border Patrol to track down a sadistic serial killer in the area. When she and her friends are kidnapped in the middle of the night by the cartel, Seth and his team are called in to rescue them. They discover that the body Zoe found earlier has disappeared before it can be recovered!

Seth and Zoe drive together to Washington, D.C. for her interview with a task force. He worries that the cartel may still be after her and agrees to drive her there and help her take a U-Haul full of her things to her new home in Richmond on the way. I loved watching them talk and learn more about each other on their trip. They have to pose as a married couple to avoid suspicion in case they are being followed.  Their road trip has adventure, sabotage, and some steamy nights.

The descriptions of the desert’s beauty and dangers made me feel as though I was right there with them. Cold Deceit is the second book in the Cold Justice: Most Wanted series and now I’m wondering if we get to see more of Zoe and Seth in later books?

Anderson’s writing reminded me of Sandra Brown and Laura Griffin with plenty of suspense, romance, and spice. I look forward to reading more of her books. With so many titles to choose from, there are plenty of options.  This was an exciting and satisfying story.