Cold-case detective Raquel Laing faces new threats and long-buried secrets in this gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing, after what might politely be termed a "difficult childhood," was taken in by a loving family at the age of nine. She still lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, who works as an online investigator for organizations all over the world.

Trouble arrives with a seemingly everyday case for Inspector Laing: the homicide of a drug dealer in a deserted corner of San Francisco. But the everyday rapidly spirals into complications, just as a simple Ancestry DNA search throws Dee into a confusion and turmoil of her own.

Raquel's case blows up into a bloody catastrophe on her own doorstep. She ends up on the Cold Case Unit with her old friend, Al Hawkin, as her body heals and her propensity for taking illicit shortcuts is investigated. While recuperating, Raquel uncovers some disturbing facts about her own past-and Dee, wrestling with the knowledge that she is not who she thought, asks for help in uncovering the truth.

The past, however, refuses to stay in the past. Even more troubling, Dee's search keeps brushing up against Raquel's, leading to an ever more urgent plunge into the facts surrounding Dee's mother and Raquel's father-two people who were in no way related, yet whose fates were undeniably intertwined.

This is a case that is both present and past, personal and professional, tying together those who are gone with those who are very much still here.