An unputdownable first novel in the bestselling tradition of Martina Cole and Catherine Cookson. It’s 1985. A man is hunted down and killed by a woman assassin known as The Headhunter. Seventeen years later, his body turns up, and detective inspector Lorraine Hunt is called in to investigate. The day the body is found, Claire Lumsdon is the victim of a violent kidnapping – the third in a series of abductions of young girls. For her sixteen-year-old sister Kerry, it’s the beginning of a nightmare. Kerry’s got enough on her plate already – her alcoholic mother isn’t remotely capable of looking after Kerry and her five siblings, so Kerry and her older brother Robbie must make sure there’s food on the table. Convinced the police can’t help, Kerry sets out on a frantic search for her sister. But her hunt leads her to much more than she’d bargained for: Newcastle’s gangster underworld, a seventeen-year-old murder; and, finally, the secrets about her past – and her father – that her mother hoped she’d never have to face. And all the time, the clock is ticking for Claire.