The girls are sleeping upstairs. If their parents make one wrong move, their daughters will die. Emmy and her little sister Dani are sleeping in their bedroom upstairs. Their parents are in the kitchen. A knife is jammed to their mother’s throat. Their father has a stack of kitchen plates balanced on his back. The intruder rasps, ‘Don’t be breathing too hard now. I reckon smashing plates is the sort of noise that’ll wake a child. Have them coming down to see what’s going on. There can’t be witnesses . . .’ What Detective Maddie Ives will find in that nice family kitchen will horrify even this most hardened cop. And she knows the victim . . .