Sarah Pribek is a police officer in Minneapolis' Missing Persons department. Her department, always small, is down to two people since the brutal rape and murder of her partner Genevieve's teenage daughter. Everyone knew who the killer was because the daughter told them before her death, but he got off on a technicality, and Genevieve, after months of grief leave, is still paralysed by anger and her sense of betrayal.

Sarah is married to Shiloh, another police officer, a sexy man of mystery and few words, who is about to go to Quantico for FBI training. But he never shows up and Sarah is forced to conduct a Missing Persons search for her own husband. It takes her to his family where she hears of a sister she never knew he had, to New Mexico, where she herself grew up, and finally back to Genevieve, where all the threads of this brilliantly told novel come together.