"DI Joanna Piercy is irritated at what she perceives to be an attempt to wrap her up in cotton wool during her pregnancy when she is asked to take on the case of Zachary Foster, a missing ninety-six-year-old man suffering from dementia. Zachary has vanished from his residential care home on the edge of Leek during the night with his beloved old teddy bear. He can't have gone far, surely, but how did a frail, elderly man manage to abscond from a secure...

With her wedding day approaching, Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy doesn't need the stress of a disciplinary hearing-or the disapproval of her soon-to-be in-laws. She'd welcome nearly any distraction from her complicated life. But she takes no joy in the grim realities of her current case. On a snowy December morning, fourteen-year-old Kayleigh Harrison is found outside Patches nightclub in Leek. Nearly naked and half-dead from the cold, she says...