Women & Children First

Crime veteran Marti MacAlister has put her husband's killer in jail and her heart on hold while she juggles life with two teenagers and eighteen-hour days as the only black woman cop in a Chicago suburb.

In a summer of drugs, gangs, guns, and weirdos, two new homicides seem unrelated-a lonely old woman's fall down her basement steps casts suspicion on her bickering heirs and an ex-teacher drowns in a motel pool with no one to mourn her.

Then a collection of newspaper clippings and an eruption of brutal murders propel Marti back seven years to an abused child's disappearance-and into a fierce need to pull the threads together. Slowly, skillfully, she draws closer a killer out to bury a family horror only Marti can lay to rest.