Years before, when the teenage daughter of a U.S. Senator inexplicably disappeared on a residential street in an upscale Washington, D.C., neighborhood police pulled out all the stops to find out what happened to her. Despite a major law enforcement effort that included not only the Metropolitan Police Department, but also the FBI, there was no success. There were no witnesses, no clues.

Thirteen years later a young detective, Ted Samuels, who inherited a number of unsolved cases of a just-retired investigator, delves into the matter after the girl's mother pays an emotional visit to the precinct; one she makes every year on the anniversary of her daughter's disappearance.

Besides the difficulties of finding evidence from a very more-than-a-decade-old-and-very-cold trail, Samuels is also stymied in his efforts to pursue the cold case investigation. His acting commanding officer hasn’t made it a secret that he wants to have “acting” removed from his title. He doesn’t want a case that was unsolved by his predecessors years ago to frustrate the detective, and have the reopened matter noted by the higher-ups at headquarters as his failure.

Despite the obstacles put before him, Samuels covertly continues.

What he didn’t realize at the onset of the investigation was that he was headed for a long journey to dark places where he would never have wanted to go.