Hotwire
Authors: Alex Kava
Tags: #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Thrillers
Hotwire
Number IX of
Maggie O'Dell
Alex Kava
Anchor (2011)
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Women Sleuths
Fictionttt Generalttt Mystery & Detectivettt Thrillersttt Women Sleuthsttt
Review
EARLY PRAISE FOR
HOTWIRE
:
“O’Dell could be Reacher’s long-lost twin.”
—
Lee Child
"Outstanding . . . A sizzling plot, achingly real characters, and government officials working their backsides off to save their backsides, all strike as lethally as lightning."
—
Publishers Weekly
, starred review
“Kava spins a plot with significant political ramifications, combining nonstop action and lethal danger with developing the personal relationahip between Maggie and Ben. The seventh in the Maggie O’Dell series is a strong entry that’s just plausible enough to leave readers wondering about the line between truth and fiction.”
—
Booklist
“The question of how such wildly disparate outrages might be connected is ingenious.”
—* Kirkus Reviews
*
"Twisted plots, shocking characters, breakneck pacing. Guaranteed to keep you up all night!"
—Lisa Gardner, author of *Love You More
"
Hotwire
has it all: solid storytelling that propels you right along, intriguing mysteries, memorable and believable characters, and ripped-from-the-news storylines . . . Don't miss
Hotwire
, a perfect book for the middays of summer."
—Bookreporter.com
"Kava has given readers a tightly written, ambitiously plotted mystery involving secret government research programs and devious goings-on in the rural Sand Hills...I couldn't out it down..Kava seems to get better with every book."
--*Omaha World-Herald
"Kava demonstrates the thriller chops that have earned her a place on The New York Times
best-seller list. Kava charges through the action and builds towards an electric ending."
-
-Lincoln Star Journal
PRAISE FOR
DAMAGED
:
"Rip-roaring action that only builds in intensity with every page,
Damaged
kept me so riveted during a long plane ride that I completely forgot where I was -- the mark of a true thriller!"
--
Tess Gerritsen
,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Ice Cold
“
Damaged
moves and rides and thrills right along from page to page...The perfect book to take along on vacation -- for some many frightening, twisted reasons.”
*—Bookreporter.com
*
“This intense thriller builds to an eye-popping revelation that will leave fans eager for the sequel.
"
—Publishers Weekly
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
ALEX KAVA
’s two stand-alone novels and eight novels featuring FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell have been published in more than twenty countries, appearing on bestseller lists in Britain, Australia, Poland, Germany, and Italy. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Alex divides her time between Omaha, Nebraska, and Pensacola, Florida.
From the Hardcover edition.
Alex Kava is the author of ten previous novels, eight of which feature FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell. A former PR director, Alex dedicated herself to writing full time in 1996. She lives in Nebraska, USA. Find out more at:
www.alexkava.com
.
Maggie O’Dell series
Black Friday
Exposed
A Necessary Evil
At the Stroke of Madness
The Soul Catcher
Split Second
A Perfect Evil
Damaged
Other fiction
Whitewash
One False Move
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748128594
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 Alex Kava
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
TO DEBORAH GROH CARLIN
,
the wizard behind the curtain
Contents
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8
NEBRASKA NATIONAL FOREST
HALSEY, NEBRASKA
Dawson Hayes looked around the campfire and immediately recognized the losers. It was almost too easy to spot them.
He could pretend he had some super radar in reading people, but the truth was he knew the losers because … what was that old saying? It takes one to know one. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have been huddled over there with them, wondering why he had been invited, sweating and waiting to see what the price of the invitation was.
He didn’t feel sorry for them. They didn’t have to show up. Nobody dragged them here. So anything that happened was sort of their own fault. Their price for wanting to be somebody they weren’t. Admission to the cool club didn’t come without some sacrifice. If they thought otherwise, then they really were hopeless losers.
At least Dawson accepted who he was. Actually he didn’t mind. He liked being different from his classmates and sometimes he played up the part, purposely wearing all black on football Fridays when everyone else wore school colors. Being the geek got him noticed, even garnered an eye roll from Coach Hickman, who before Dawson started wearing black on Fridays hadn’t bothered to remember Dawson’s name.
At the beginning of the school year, during roll call for history class Coach would yell out “Dawson Hayes” and look around the entire room, over Dawson’s head and sometimes straight at him. When Dawson raised his hand, Coach Hickman’s eyebrows would dart up like the man would never in a million years have put a cool name like Dawson Hayes together with the pimpled face and the hesitant, skinny arm claiming it. Dawson didn’t mind. He was finally starting to get noticed and it didn’t matter how it came about.
Even now he knew the only reason for his continued invitation to these exclusive retreats in the forest was because Johnny Bosh liked what Dawson brought to the party. Tonight that something was burning a hole in Dawson’s jacket pocket. He tried not to think about it. Tried not to think how earlier he had lifted it—that’s right, lifted, borrowed, not stolen—from his dad’s holster while the man slept on his one night off. His dad probably wouldn’t care as soon as he heard Dawson was hanging with Johnny B. Okay, that wasn’t true. His dad would be pissed. But wasn’t he always encouraging Dawson to make friends, go do stuff that other kids were doing? In other words, be a normal teenager for a change.
Dawson thought that was part of his problem—he was too normal. He wasn’t a superstar athlete like Johnny B or a tobacco-chewing cowboy like Trevor or a brainiac like Kyle, but just holding the Taser X26, with its lightweight, bright-yellow casing that fit perfectly in his hand, gave him a new identity and a sense of confidence. All he had to do was point and
wham
, there goes fifty thousand volts of electricity. And suddenly Dawson Hayes, the powerless, became powerful. He could control anyone and everyone. With this sleek piece of technology in the palm of his hand Dawson felt like he could do anything.