Isabella Maldonado

An FBI agent with a background in cryptography. A brilliant game maker bent on revenge. A deadly battle of wits and wills. An ingenious thriller from the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Cipher. FBI agent and former military codebreaker Daniela “Dani” Vega witnesses a murder on a Manhattan sidewalk. The victim is chief of staff for a powerful New York senator. The assassin turned informant is Gustavo Toro. His code: hit the target and don’t ask questions. When Dani suspects a complex conspiracy, the only way to take down the mastermind is from the inside, forcing her to partner with Toro. Together they must infiltrate the inner circle at a remote facility. Except it’s a trap. For all of them. Locked in a subterranean labyrinth and held captive by an unseen host, Dani, Toro, and others must fight for their lives. Now Dani must stay undercover, unravel a bizarre conspiracy, and survive lethal puzzles. But will Toro be friend or foe? Because in this killer’s game, everything is real: the paranoia, the desperation, and the body count. And only one person can make it out alive.

For nearly thirty years a serial killer has been hiding in plain sight. So has the key to an FBI agent’s dark past. A family is murdered as they sleep. FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera and her new team are tasked with determining whether there is any link between this attack and another triple homicide from four years earlier and more than two thousand miles away. In the process, they’ll discover a serial killer so cunning that his grisly trail of death spanning nearly three decades has gone undetected. Each crime scene reminds Nina of the ghostly Latin folktale of La Llorona, which terrified her when she was an abandoned and vulnerable child. Now it’s back to haunt her. Nina has known evil, but these macabre reenactments are as disturbing as they are baffling. Now she must uncover the meaning behind the rituals as the evidence leads her in an unexpected direction—far closer to home than anyone could have imagined. As the team narrows in on a suspect, the present collides with Nina’s past in a twist of fate that forces her to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Special Agent Nina Guerrera and her FBI team are called in to investigate a string of disappearances as a predator stalks the grounds of an elite university. They piece together clues revealing the dark mind of a killer compelled to fully conquer his victims before they die using a combination of behavioral psychology, Stockholm Syndrome, and Falconry techniques to control his captives. Nina must face her greatest failure―and her greatest fear―to stop a deadly hunter before he claims another prize

An FBI agent tracks a brilliant serial killer in New York―right back to her own cold-blooded past in a riveting thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Cipher . FBI Special Agent Daniela “Dani” Vega was seventeen when her mother murdered her father. Ten years after Dani’s own damning eyewitness testimony sealed her mother’s fate, she’s starting to have doubts. What if she got it all wrong? A veteran NYPD homicide detective agrees to reopen the closed case on one condition―Dani must help him find a serial killer who’s been operating throughout New York City for the past decade. If anyone can decipher his patterns, and his riddles, it’s a trained codebreaker like Dani. The killer knows this too. And his next riddle―and victim―are meant just for her. For Dani, stopping a killer―and learning what really happened to her father―becomes more personal and more dangerous with each new twist. As secrets of the past are unearthed, the truth could forever change Dani’s life…and the lives of everyone she loves.

A dead man’s riddles—and secrets—thrust an FBI codebreaker into a deadly cross-country race for justice in a propulsive thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Cipher. During a recent undercover sting gone bad, hit man Gustavo Toro died in the arms of FBI Special Agent Daniela “Dani” Vega. But Toro had secrets he refused to take to the grave. In the event of his death, Toro left behind a video that promises to expose a mysterious mastermind who has been operating with impunity for decades. But there’s a catch. Dani’s team must follow Toro’s cryptic clues on a cross-country hunt for justice, and piecing together his past is more twisted than Dani could have imagined. But as Dani and her team race to gather the evidence, it’s clear this powerful adversary will stop at nothing to keep their secrets—including eliminating those who threaten to reveal them.

To a cunning serial killer, she was the one that got away. Until now… FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera escaped a serial killer’s trap at sixteen. Years later, when she’s jumped in a Virginia park, a video of the attack goes viral. Legions of new fans are not the only ones impressed with her fighting skills. The man who abducted her eleven years ago is watching. Determined to reclaim his lost prize, he commits a grisly murder designed to pull her into the investigation…but his games are just beginning. And he’s using the internet to invite the public to play along. His coded riddles may have made him a depraved social media superstar—an enigmatic cyber-ghost dubbed “the Cipher”—but to Nina he’s a monster who preys on the vulnerable. Partnered with the FBI’s preeminent mind hunter, Dr. Jeffrey Wade, who is haunted by his own past, Nina tracks the predator across the country. Clue by clue, victim by victim, Nina races to stop a deadly killer while the world watches.