A family brutally slaughtered. A daughter disappeared into thin air... Still recovering from the murder attempt that nearly took her life, tough-as-nails New York homicide detective Jasmine Steele is slowly coming to grips with a world that's seemingly gone mad. She has every reason to fear death: her parents are both long gone, and she watched her brother bleed out following a drunk driving accident that left his wife dead and his son an orphan. Now Chase lives with his Aunt Jasmine--Jazz for short--and life was readjusting for them both until a serial killer gunning for Jazz almost resulted in the murders of both Chase and Jazz's longtime actress friend Hadley. And there are still loose ends she’s desperate to tie up…

Jazz's bleary obsession with her past is interrupted when she's assigned to a horrifying case: the entire Johnson family's been viciously murdered. Hard-boiled alert: author Kimberly Amato pulls no punches. The mother's throat was slit while trying to call for help and the father was shot in the chest, then gruesomely sliced up while still alive, like a scene from a horror film. Also found, the body of their young son, about Chase's age, left in the closet with a snapped neck. When ever-adept Jazz finds a business card in the father's wallet reading "Garrison Developments," she's suddenly on high alert. This is a link to her horrendous losses.

But it's the remaining clues to a missing fourth victim--a teenage daughter named Kaley--that leave her reeling.