Gayle Lynds is the New York Times bestselling author of four international thrillers, including Masquerade and The Coil. She also coauthored three bestselling novels in the Covert-One series with Robert Ludlum, including The Hades Factor, which was a CBS miniseries in 2006. She has been a newspaper reporter, a magazine editor, and a think-tank editor with top-secret clearance before turning to fiction. She lives in Santa Barbara.