"A million dollars...or else!"

Shortly after beautiful, slightly wild, 17-year old Zoe Catlett shocks her family with the news she is a lesbian, they receive a phone call demanding her ransom. Zoe's stepmother is convinced the "kidnapping" is a ploy. Zoe's father has plenty of money, but Zoe wants to go to acting school, not the Ivy League institution he has picked out. Even so, it might not have been wise to tell the threatening caller, "We don't have a million dollars handy, so I'm afraid you'll just have to keep her." It's the more sensible grandmother of the missing girl who contacts Private Detective Alex Peres for help. Alex no sooner takes up the case when a dear friend's death leaves her with another mystery on her hands. Names and family secrets between the two cases overlap, as do plenty of people with motive for mayhem--and maybe even murder. No longer convinced her friend's death was suicide, Alex finds herself neck-deep in a complex and emotionally draining web of danger and deceit. Can she solve one case without doing irreparable harm to those involved in the other--and herself?