A "crackling tale" of double-murder, a vanishing friend, and a female PI in the Pacific Northwest (Rich Zahradnik, author of the Coleridge Taylor mysteries).

Washington private Investigator Eddie Shoes is enjoying a rare period of calm. She's less lonely now that her card-sharp mom from Vegas is sharing her home. Not to mention a new dog. She's even landed a new client: her best childhood friend from Spokane. Dakota is in jail, held on a weapons charge, and she's asking Eddie to do two things: lend her cash for bail, and investigate who's allegedly stalking her.

Soon after Dakota is freed, she disappears again, leaving Eddie to answer to the local cops, including her ex-boyfriend Chance Parker. Has Dakota been kidnapped? If not, why did she jump bail? And what are Eddie's business cards doing on the bodies of two fresh murder victims? The clues might lay in Dakota and Eddie's shared history—one that goes all the way back to high school, and to a past that Eddie dreads to revisit.