Blood Brothers — Kate Merrill

Realtor Diana Rittenhouse is getting her act together after a messy divorce. She has uprooted her real estate business from urban Philadelphia to rural North Carolina and has recently survived A Lethal Listing (see Diana Rittenhouse Mystery 1/5) that almost claimed her life. Diana is excited about getting her Broker-In-Charge license and taking a second chance on love with Matthew Troutman, an easy-going southerner who is her polar opposite. But fate intervenes in the form of two eight year old look-alikes, who are destined to turn her world upside down. Juan is a Mexican orphan, while Johnny is the son of Diana's wealthy new clients. The boys are a modern day Prince and Pauper, but in spite of their differences, they become inseparable friends---until Diana makes a terrible blunder and one of the boys is kidnapped from her Open House. Neither the local police nor the FBI makes progress in the missing persons case, and as the casualties mount, Diana is devastated by guilt. She takes matters into her own hands and joins forces with her new love, Matthew, to find the abducted child. The quest leads them deep into the Carolina mountains, where the backwoods natives seem to hail from a previous century. When bullets start to fly, they fight not only to rescue the child, but also to save their own lives.