Whispered Lies by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love

Gabrielle Saxe is a woman in hiding. Formerly married to an Italian actor, he hurt and abused her, both physically and sexually. He only allowed her to divorce him by giving up most of the money from her trust fund. But he remains in control of her, threatening to release photos he took of her when she was drugged and barely conscious and claim that she was the sexual pervert.

So Gabrielle hides herself away from others. But a problem has come to her attention. A friend of hers has warned her that students from the same school that she and Gabrielle attended are being stolen away for what purpose remains unknown. Gabrielle, who has been nursing dreams of vengeance against the Anguis family, who killed her mother, latches onto this information and forwards it to the CIA and FBI in the hopes that they will rescue the girl. But in doing so, she allows her code name, Mirage, to be tracked over the internet, putting her in danger.

Carlos Delgado is a member of BAD, and he had taken part in the operation to rescue the kidnapped girl, Amanda, and now he wants a piece of Mirage, who he assumes is a criminal who snitches for money. But when he tracks Gabrielle down, he is surprised to see that Mirage is a woman, and while she has no training or combat experience, she stands up well in the face of danger. For the other side have also been able to track down Mirage, and have sent Baby Face, an incredibly ugly mercenary posing as a DEA agent, to bring her in and wring all the information she knows from her.

Carlos rescues her from Baby Face, and keeps her safe when another group Carlos has infiltrated, wants to know what was up with Baby Face. Carlos claims Gabrielle as his girlfriend, and she plays along long enough for him to kill the members of the gang who kidnapped them and get them both to safety. He's impressed by her cool-headedness and ability to think in the midst of a gunfight, so when the rest of his team show up to interrogate her, he still tries to keep her safe.

But the arrival of another coded message from her former roommate shows that something strange is happening at the school both of them used to attend. To keep from being imprisoned for her own good and safety, Gabrielle puts forward an idea that will allow them to infiltrate the school in good time, enough for them to figure out what is going on before it is too late.

But when the Anguis family discover them and take them into custody, Carlos knows he must give up his greatest secret to keep Gabrielle safe. But how can he confess to her that he is really Alejandro Anguis, the man she hates and whom she blames for the death of her mother?

Gabrielle has come to love and feel safe with Carlos, Will her opinion of him change when she discovers that the man she has given herself to, body and soul, is also the man who killed her mother when both of them were just teenagers? Can she find it in her heart to forgive him? Or he has lost everything in his drive to keep her safe and save her life?

I don't usually read Sherrilyn Kenyon's BAD Agency novels, being more interested in her Dark-Hunter, Dream-Hunter, etc. universe, but this one was a nice surprise. Even though it took me forever to finish because I had a long car trip to take and being in pain from Sciatica made me take a Hydrocodone pill to survive the pain I'd be in at the end, I nearly fell asleep from the pill several times and pretty much passed out after I got home.

But the story held together despite being out of it for much of the ride, and once I recovered, I couldn't wait to finish the book, nor did I. I found the story tense and suspenseful, and even though I've heard from friends that the BAD novels tend to be about really Alpha Alpha males, I didn't think that Carlos fit that mold very well. But to each their own. I'm not too fond of really Alpha males, so I'm still going to approach this series with some caution. But Alpha male concerns aside, I found myself being able to understand what the secret societies gangs were despite never having encountered them before. And that was good, given how much of the book hinged on the arcane mechanics of the societies and gangs/Families involved.

So I found myself pleasantly surprised by the book, and found myself enjoying it a lot. My only upset was at the lack of described sex scenes. Sex happens, but it's a "blink and you'll miss it" kind of thing, where it passes by in comments like "And Carlos spent the rest of the night making love to her," which I found very disappointing, given how well Ms. Kenyon usually writes such things. But I'd still recommend this book anyway, in a testament to how good it was.