Detective Billie Ann Wilde

When Detective Billie Ann Wilde receives a desperate call that five-year-old Emma Wilson is missing, she rushes to the family home. But inside the picture-perfect house surrounded by Florida marshlands, she finds no children’s clothes or toys, no photos of the innocent child Emma’s mother Marissa describes. Billie suspects Marissa Wilson is hiding from someone.

Summoned to a crime scene swarming with people, Detective Billie Ann Wilde is devastated to find a woman’s broken bones abandoned in a suitcase on the sand of a popular Florida beach. And Billie’s blood runs cold when she reads the name “Danni” handwritten on the luggage tag in black ink: the name of Billie’s own best friend. Rushing over to Danni’s home, Billie is relieved to find her alive, preparing dinner for her two young daughters. So whose bones are in the suitcase? And why was Danni’s name at the scene?

Rushing towards the tall trees in the distance, Detective Billie Ann Wilde can already hear the sobs of those gathered at the scene of the murder of a young child. And when she spots the little boy’s pale skin and beautiful blond ringlets, her heart catches in her chest. It’s Billie’s own nephew, Charlie, whose life has been taken. Billie is immediately told she can’t work on Charlie’s case, but nothing will stop her finding justice for her brother, Peter. Seeing Peter for the first time in years, he looks nothing like the happy-go-lucky teen she grew up with.

Detective Billie Ann Wilde assesses the couple sitting awkwardly on plastic chairs in her interview room, certain she knows exactly what has happened to little Madison Harris. She was supposed to come home on the school bus, but her cold body was found in local marshlands, and as her mother cries desperately, her stepfather, John, barely looks up. And they found Madison’s blood in John’s car... With John arrested, Billie is certain she has put a killer behind bars, but it’s not long before she hears the heart-shattering news that another girl is missing.