This HaBO is from Elma, who is looking for this darker romance:
Hello, I read this book 1-2 years ago, via Kindle. I can’t find it in my history at all though and it is bugging me. What I remember:
– It’s set in a South American country.
– She is renting a room from an elderly couple.
– He is also renting a room from them.
Main characters write notes to each other.
Elderly couple are helping hide his criminal activities.
Elderly couple eventually betray him, because money and safety.
He is some sort of criminal, burying bodies possibly?
She is kidnapped and he winds up saving her.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Is it possibly Carolyn Crane’s BEHIND THE MASK? Not all the details line up, but it is set in South America and there’s plenty of suspense & intrigue (also, cw/tw, violence). Here’s the blurb:
“Zelda and her sister grew up with identical faces, but their lives couldn’t be more different—Zelda’s sister got caught up in drugs, while nerdy Zelda worked as a forensic botanist in the CIA until a disastrous mission sent her to the security of a desk job.
Now she’s back to take her sister’s place, but things don’t go exactly according to plan. Zelda is “traded” deep into the South American jungle until she finds herself confronted with the image of the very man she had spent a better part of her career at CIA tracking down – the infamous Kabakas; a near mythical assassin whose prowess had been legendary. Could it really be him? Kabakas, aka Hugo Martinez, lives in a crumbling mountaintop villa surrounded by blood-red savinca flowers caring for the young boy he rescued with the help of his mysterious new live-in housekeeper. He’s put his mercenary days behind him, but he’ll do what it takes to protect his precious mountaintop villa and surrounding village – even if it means the infamous Kabakas has to make a comeback.”
Slightly o/t, but Carolyn Crane is a pen name of Annika Martin. She only wrote four Undercover Associates book, although she seemed to be setting up some characters for their own stories, she published no more books in that series, alas.
If this isn’t the book, I’d also recommend checking out Pam Godwin’s nine-book Deliver series. They’re all very dark and, iirc, some are set in South America.