An unputdownable debut in the bestselling tradition of Martina Cole and Catherine Cookson.
It's 1985. A man is hunted down and killed by a woman assassin known as The Headhunter. Seventeen years later, the body turns up and detective inspector Lorraine Hunt is called in to investigate.
The day the body is found, a young girl called Claire Lumsdon is the victim of a violent kidnap - the third in a series of abductions of young girls. For her sixteen-year-old sister Kerry, it's the beginning of a nightmarish rollercoaster of fear and desperation.
Kerry's got enough on her plate already - her alcoholic mother isn't remotely capable of looking after Kerry and her five siblings so it's pretty much down to Kerry and her older brother Robbie to make sure there's food on the table. But then her sister disappears - and, that same day, her mother collapses and is taken into hospital.
Convinced the police can't help - although she does start to form a bond with tough policewoman Lorraine - Kerry sets out on a frantic search for her sister. But her hunt leads her to much more than she'd bargained for: Newcastle's gangster underworld; a seventeen-year-old murder; and, finally, the secrets about her past - and her father - which her mother hoped she'd never have to face.
And all the time, the clock is ticking for Claire . . .
