DCI Rachel Stone's life just seems to be a series of mistakes. Investigating the abduction of a young girl she ignores the rights of the suspected killer in favour of the rights of the girl's family to know what has happened to her and where she is buried. When the killer takes her to a second body, instead of plaudits, she finds herself under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission with the threat of being sacked. Temporarily saved by the support of the families of the girls, she is sidelined into the force's cold case squad. Thinking it will gain her some respite from her greatest critic, the Force's Police and Crime Commissioner, she chooses to investigate the murder of the commissioner's cousin. Instead of making life a little easier this takes her into a complex web of child sexual exploitation, political and police corruption. Just when she thinks she has got a result on this, the murdered man's killers return, and she needs to put herself in the line of fire to protect their intended target.