September 15, 2023
When an unpaid Wall Street intern at a Manhattan investment bank discovers there is $10 million in cash ready to pay kidnappers stored in a basement vault, she decides to fake a kidnapping. Faye Walker had a very normal suburban life as a child, complete with a backyard trampoline and two loving parents, until her mother passed away when she was 11. Her father descended into drugs, lost his job and the house, then sent Faye and her sister, Caitlin, to live with their grandmother in her trailer in Kentucky coal country before finally landing in prison. Through sheer hard work, an innate talent for math, and a fortuitous decision to actually listen to advice given to her, Faye turns a personal downward spiral in high school into a full ride for a BA and MBA before finally landing the coveted summer internship in Manhattan. She is positive her hard work will land her one of the two full-time junior investment analyst positions that will be announced when the internship ends. And with the addition of finding her one true love in NYC, an Irish taxi driver who wants to become a first responder, she feels like the world is finally turning out as it should. But when she discovers that she doesn't have a chance of getting one of the jobs, she cooks up a fake kidnapping scheme to cheat the company out of the cash it keeps on hand in the event one of its clients needs immediate access to ransom money. But when her partner, a rich son turned drug addict, turns up unexpectedly dead, her careful plans begin to unravel, and she is left trying to survive. An unexpected twist at the end caps this exciting jaunt, which is heavy on specific details of Faye's chess-move planned heist, though thin on why she decides it is her only option. A compelling heist-thriller-love story that readers will race through.
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