After suffering a horrific loss, Nat and Abi must try to piece their lives together, build a future, and repair the past. But before they can figure out their own complicated relationship, they must unite to help Jake find his children—no easy task, since their mother has disappeared, and they’ve been left with a priest who is bent on giving them away!
In a maelstrom of grief, anger, and legal complications, one of Abi’s friends, Dr. Vida Cadwallader, also a female Pinkerton, steps up to help. As Vida tries to help The Innocents make sense of what’s happening, she soon becomes embroiled in mysterious happenings within the brutal insane asylum where she consults part-time. When one of her colleagues is murdered, Vida quickly becomes a suspect.
With no time to lose, Vida, Abi, Jake, and Nat band together to free one of the asylum’s unwilling patients who may hold the key to all their unanswered questions—if she only lives long enough to survive the escape. Now, with an unknown murderer on the loose as well, time is running short for them to find the children, solve the crime, and spirit the patient away to safety. Can they keep their necks out of the noose and buy enough time to solve the mystery shrouding their lives? Can anyone make sense of this world of shadows, darkness, and madness?
EXCERPT
Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada 1871
“Hey, you bitch.” He raised
a handgun. “Maggie King was my mother. You know her. The woman from the train who
you got hanged.”
She froze. That man had sat beside her at the docks when she first arrived
in Victoria. The picture was still clear in her mind’s eye. He had sat there at
the docks. He talked to her. He asked if she was traveling alone. That same man
now pointed a handgun right at her.
The man’s face twisted into a sneer. “She warned you. You hurt us, we
hurt you.”
He fired—quicker than Abigail or anyone else could move.
“Murder. Bloody murder!”
