"Lonnie Blake's life and career have been on the skids since his wife was murdered eighteen months ago. Then one chilly autumn night Carol Dodson steps suddenly out of the city darkness and asks him to take her in. For that one night Lonnie and Carol become lovers as Carol, a sometime prostitute, agrees to pretend she's the woman Lonnie loved and tragically lost. Long after Carol is gone, Lonnie remembers her and the passion she rekindled in him, the passion he thought had died.

Finally, obsessed, he begins to follow her - and so is led on by desire into a world of sudden danger and sudden death, a swiftly closing trap of intrigue and murder."--BOOK JACKET.

"Because Carol is not what she seems. Though apparently a lost soul of the streets, she is in fact the lone guardian of an incredible secret and the desperately resourceful prey of an unstoppable hunt. And before Lonnie can set eyes - and hands - and lips on her again, he will also learn that secret, the secret of an extraordinary little girl named Amanda.

And he will also become a target, isolated and wanted not only by the police but by a crack team of international killers willing to murder anyone who gets in their way."--BOOK JACKET.