Description
If New York police captain Nikki Heat is acting like she’s seen a ghost, it’s for good reason.
Her mother, who has been presumed dead for seventeen years, has resurfaced—even though it seems Cynthia Heat’s only reason for doing so is to issue vague warnings that the threat that first made her go into hiding is still as grave as ever.
This time the peril doesn’t pertain to just Cynthia. As Nikki gets closer to the truth, a shadowy figure who goes by the name The Serpent is menacing her in ever more violent ways.
What was Cynthia involved in that got her into so much trouble? What could make a loving mother feel like she had no choice but to fake her own death and disappear from her daughter’s life? The answers may lie seventeen years in the past and halfway across the world . . .
. . . where secret CIA superspy Derrick Storm has just tripped over a long-ago recording of one of Cynthia’s phone calls. Storm is on the trail of a nefarious group of Chinese businessmen known as the Shanghai Seven, who have been hiding their illicit activities behind a thin mask of legitimacy.
Now it seems Cynthia Heat’s past and the Shanghai Seven’s present have merged. And so have the fortunes of two dogged investigators.
Nikki Heat and Derrick Storm, the characters who helped Richard Castle become one of America’s favorite authors, unite for the first time—and they’ll need all their considerable skills to stop a villain who has the resources and ruthlessness to kill them both.
