January Cold Kill — Robert Leininger

Gorgeous ex-showgirl Gabrielle Johns, 31, makes an extremely good living as a backroom poker in Reno, Nevada. "Good-old-boys" check out her blond hair and Playmate terrific figure and think she'll be easy picking. Wrong. She has a gift for poker, for bluffing, for knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. But having once trained as a PI at her father-in-law's investigative firm, friends and relatives and people she once knew in the past sometimes come to her for investigative help. She tries to refer them to her father-in-law's agency, but under the unshakable delusion that Gabbi still works for him, Bert puts the cases back on Gabbi's shoulders. On a cold day in January, Ashley Dinsmore, the young wife of a federal judge, a woman Gabbi knew some years ago, asks for help. She's being stalked by a man who professes to love her. He has highly compromising pictures of them in bed together. Ashley has no memory of how that could have happened. For Ashley, it's a nightmare, one she desperately wants to escape. She hopes Gabbi will be able to neutralize her stalker, get him to stop, and get the pictures, all without her husband finding out. As usual, Bert is busy and dumps the case on Gabbi's shoulders, putting her squarely in the jaws of a meat-grinder that could cost her her life.