I had the opportunity to ARC read the newest book in the Gina Harte series which will be book 19 and is called Watch them disappear and has been written by none other than Carla Kovach.

This book will be released on the 21th of September.

Within this series we saw the love between Gina and Briggs blossom but in the end also fizzle out and even though Gina will always have a special place in her heart for Briggs, he has made it clear that their love should stay in the past. In the last book Gina found love again and started dating Brodie, a DCI from another town.

No rest for the wicked in this newest novel; within the first chapters a woman gets kidnapped and with that, the story begins.

Ursula is about to close up her dog grooming salon Chez Ursula once outside she notices that Mindy’s car is still in the lot but she left work over an hour ago. Upon closer inspection she sees Mindy’s pet bunny Hoppy still in her basket at the rear of the car which is something Mindy would never do since Hoppy is like her baby. When circling the car, she sees Mindy’s phone all smashed up and there is blood on the windscreen. When Gina and her team arrive, it doesn’t take long for them to figure out Mindy has been taken and time is of the essence. On Mindy’s work computer there was an email from someone called OpenMeSmiler, telling her to delete the email after reading, to come outside and to not touch her phone or get anyone involved or else the video this person had of Mindy would go online and would be sent to all her contacts, the video being of Mindy having intercourse with a man.

When inspecting Mindy’s house, police find numerous little spy camera’s hidden in Mindy’s bed and bathroom and her laptop has been smashed to bits. The neighbor saw men lurking since a couple of weeks prior, not knowing if Mindy maybe did some work on the side the neighbor let it slide. Nobody seemed to know what happened to Mindy, disappearing without a trace.

Meanwhile OpenMeSmiler is a big deal on the dark web and Brian, aged 18 has been drawn in; Watching the camera feeds made available by OpenMeSmiler watching men and women do their thing. When the question came if Brian could be trusted and if he wanted to go a tad deeper in this whole ordeal, Brian didn’t hesitate what he didn’t know is that he would be signing away his live with that. OpenMeSmiler is someone that has blackmail on every single one that participates including Brian which gives him the upper hand in this whole operation. Sending people to do his bidding, making people watch horrific things just to make them complicit.

The police isn’t any closer to getting the person behind all this, not even having a positive ID; when they find a woman deceased on the outer corner of a park and find a picture in her mouth with the words on the back about there being a second one soon, they try to piece things together.

Will they make it in time to stop the second act? Who is OpenMeSmiler? Will Brian be safe?

It’s a ⭐⭐⭐⭐ star read for me.