The Cut Out - Tapa dura

When videotape of the Vice President's abduction reveals that her ex-husband may be still alive, Caroline investigates, hoping to uncover his possible involvement in a plot to infiltrate a terrorist organization by faking his own death. 100,000 first printing.

Cutout: A third person used to conceal the contact between two people -- usually an agent and a handler who do not want to meet because one or both may be under surveillance. A pawn.
-- The Encyclopedia of Espionage

In an electrifying thriller debut guaranteed to redefine the genre, Francine Mathews brings her expertise and experience as a former CIA analyst to a work of fiction that reads like the real thing -- in a breathtaking tale of a world on the brink of chaos ... and the one woman who can stop the deadly countdown to global terror.

They were partners, lovers, soul mates in a business where betrayal is only a heartbeat away. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael lost her husband Eric when his plane was blown out of the sky by an elite group of terrorists known as 30 April.

For two years she's headed an Agency task force tracking Eric's killers. Now, her dead husband has surfaced among those responsible for an explo