In the latest installment of this acclaimed series, McCone must tackle the cold case of a missing woman and face her own worst fears: what can happen when a marriage goes bad- or turns deadly.
In the wake of her Nevada nuptuals to fellow detective Hy Ripinsky, McCone dives into one of her most baffling cases yet- the disappearance of Laurel Greenwood, who vanished twenty-two years before without a trace. Laurel's grown-up daughter is desperately seeking closure and wants McCone to find out the fate of the young mother and artisty who never returned from a day of landscape painting in a central California coastal town. The case is cold, and the evidence McCone begins uncovering is chilling. Secrets kept for two decades now emerge to create a portrait of a woman who's perfect on the surface and anything but a paragon beneath it. She intends to uncover the truth- the whole truth- even when it awakens her suspicions that the bonds of marriage can easily become chains, and that escaping them may lead to desperate acts... or murderous ones.