A small town in North Dakota, a little girl named Jessica has been kidnapped.
Jessica’s mother and father, Nicole and Brad, are struggling with the unthinkable disappearance of their daughter. Brad’s brother, Blake, is the chief of police in the small town. Even though he brought in dogs to look for the little girl, he wasn’t showing enough interest in the case. Blake was more interested in how this case would look to the public.
Nicole’s neighbor and friend, Pam, has a friend who works for the FBI. Pam called her friend when Nicole and Brad discovered their daughter had been kidnapped. The FBI showed up after Pam’s call and took over the case much to Chief Blake’s irritation.
Nicole has a secret in her dark past that continually haunts her, and she’s never told her husband. She is terrified that Brad will leave her if she tells him about her past and could have been the cause of the abduction.
Nicole is driven by desperation and is willing to do anything it takes to get her daughter back, including violating the orders the FBI gives to her. She thought Jessica was sleeping outside and wouldn’t survive the cold.
The FBI agent broke the rules by allowing Nicole to help with the investigating, and by taking her to the possible crime scenes. Nicole’s brother, Richard, pops back into Nicole’s life after being gone for ten years when he heard about his niece’s abduction.
Pam is a helpful neighbor who takes care of Nicole and Brad’s other child while they deal with their ordeal. That help almost got their other child kidnapped too.
Nicole came face to face with the kidnapper, a person Richard thought was dead.
This is an intense story; however, there is a lot of repetition. I started to skip most of the narrative and read the dialog between the characters.