Else Didriksen is no longer the beautiful, troubled teenager who disappeared from detective J.P. Beaumont's life thirty years earlier. Now she is a homicide victim's widow- frightened, desperate and trapped in a web of murderous greed that reaches out from a time of unrelenting terror. And the dark, deadly secrets that hold Else prisoner threaten to ensnare Beau and new partner Sue Danielson as well- and to rock their world in ways they never dreamed possible.