In Desperation

Eleven-year-old Tilly Martin is dragged from her suburban bedroom. Her mother, Cora, pleads for mercy but the kidnappers are clear: if they don't get their $5 million back in five days, Tilly dies. If anyone contacts police, Tilly dies.

Journalist Jack Gannon's estranged sister, Cora, disappeared without a trace decades ago. Now she is frantically reaching out to him for help. Cora tells him about the shameful mistakes she's made—but she guards the one secret that may be keeping her daughter alive.

A twenty-year-old assassin, haunted by the faces of the people he's executed, seeks absolution as he sets out to commit his last murders as a hired killer.

In the U.S. and Mexico, police and the press go flat out on Tilly's case. But as Gannon digs deeper into his anguished sister's past, the hours tick down on his niece's life and he faces losing a fragment of his rediscovered family forever.

Originally published in 2011.