From America's Queen of Suspense comes a gripping tale of
a young woman trying to unravel the mystery of a family
tragedy -- a quest with terrifying repercussions.
It
has been ten years since twenty-one-year-old Charles
MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing. A Columbia University
senior, about to graduate and already accepted at Duke
University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on
Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college
roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does
make one ritual phone call to his mother every year: on
Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses
to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the
death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of
9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his
calls.
Mack's sister, Carolyn, is now twenty-six, a law
school graduate, and has just finished her clerkship for a
civil court judge in Manhattan. She has endured two family
tragedies, yet she realizes that she will never be able to
have closure and get on with her life until she finds her
brother. She resolves to discover what happened to Mack and
why he has found it necessary to hide from them. So this
year when Mack makes his annual Mother's Day call, Carolyn
interrupts to announce her intention to track him down, no
matter what it takes. The next morning after Mass, her
uncle, Monsignor Devon MacKenzie, receives a scrawled
message left in the collection basket: "Uncle Devon, tell
Carolyn she must not look for me."
Mack's cryptic warning
does nothing to deter his sister from taking up the search,
despite the angry reaction of her mother, Olivia, and the
polite disapproval of Elliott Wallace, Carolyn's honorary
uncle, who is clearly in love with Olivia.
Carolyn's
pursuit of the truth about Mack's disappearance swiftly
plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered
questions. What is the secret that Gus and Lil Kramer, the
superintendents of the building in which Mack was living,
have to hide? What do Mack's old roommates, the charismatic
club owner Nick DeMarco and the cold and wealthy real estate
tycoon Bruce Galbraith, know about Mack's disappearance? Is
Nick connected to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, who
had last been seen in his trendy club? Can the police
possibly believe that Mack is not only alive, but a serial
killer, a shadowy predator of young women? Was Mack also
guilty of the brutal murder of his drama teacher and the
theft of his taped sessions with her?
Carolyn's
passionate search for the truth about her brother -- and for
her brother himself -- leads her into a deadly confrontation
with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her
to reveal.