Death is the only exit ....
Kelly Martin is a frightened teenage runaway who made ascandalous accusation, then vanished, leaving Los Angeles prosecutor Tessa Jacobi with a ticking time bomb of a case on her hands. When the investigation leads her to chic nightclubs, shadowy business deals and whispers of sexual slavery, Tessa understands that she's out of her league. So she asks for help from a man whose contacts and experience can help her bring Kelly home.
Burned by the system in the past, private investigator LukeNovak plays by his own rules -- and he's not about to change them to accommodate a smart, classy blonde from the D.A.'s office. But when a killer strikes frighteningly close to home, Tessa has nowhere to turn -- except to Luke. Because somewhere in a neon underworld, a young girl is running for her life. And Tessa is determined to get her out, even if it means placing her own life in the hands of a renegade she has no choice but to trust ...
Heather Lowell was born and raised in Southern California. She attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she began her love affair with foreign languages, international politics, and off-the-beaten-path travel. She's journeyed by bus, train, and boat throughout the developing world, meeting local people and practicing her language skills -- the occasional face-to-face encounter with livestock was an added bonus. While her "list of things to do before settling down" is still quite long, Heather has already crossed off hiking the Andes, going up the Amazon River, backpacking through Australia and New Zealand, SCUBA diving, bungee jumping, white-water rafting, caving, and jumping out of an airplane.
In the 1990s, Heather studied in Brazil, volunteered as an English teacher in Hungary, and earned a Master's degree in International Development. She briefly considered becoming a professional traveler before deciding that defaulting on her student loans wasn't a lofty career goal. Instead, she served her time in a cubicle as a project manager in Information Technology, where her life closely paralleled that of the comic strip Dilbert. When the tech bubble burst and the stock market plummeted, Heather took it as a sign that she should get out of the corporate world and follow her dream of writing. She hasn't looked back since that day.
Despite an adventurous past, Heather Lowell now considers herself to be a dedicated homebody -- with a car, mortgage, and dog to prove it. She currently lives in Arizona, where she is working on her next book.
