Synopsis

The sterile scent of the hotel lobby did little to ease Detective Harding’s unease. He surveyed the scene, a carefully constructed tableau of polite concern and thinly veiled suspicion. A woman, recently checked in with her daughter, had vanished. The staff insisted she had arrived alone, yet something felt profoundly amiss. Harding’s instincts, honed by years navigating the city's underbelly, screamed that this was more than a simple missing child case. He delved into the woman’s history –