Thirteen-year-old Lainey Emerson is the middle child in a household that police are already familiar with: her mother works too much and her step-father favors his own blood over another man’s problems—namely, Lainey and her wild older sister, Liza. So when Lainey does not come home from a Friday night out with her friends, it is dismissed by the Coral Springs Police Department as just another disillusioned South Florida teen running away from suburban drama and an unhappy home life. But Special Agent Bobby Dees, who has headed up the department’s Crimes Against Children (CAC) Squad in Miami for more than a decade, is not quite so sure.

Nicknamed "The Shepherd" by colleagues, he has an uncanny ability to find the missing and bring them back home—dead or alive. Haunted by the still unsolved disappearance of his own daughter, Bobby recognizes the all too familiar up-swell inside him, the gut feeling that Lainey Emerson is no runaway. A search of Lainey’s computer and a talk with her best friend reveal Lainey was involved in a secret Internet relationship, spawned over a chat room, and nurtured through untraceable instant messages. Bobby fears she may be the victim of an online predator, and he fears she may not be the only one.