jason andrew updike

Six years ago Abigail Grey escaped from brutal captivity, along with eight other teenage girls, at the hands of Baron Alistair Rigby of Highgate, a man who knew well how to guard himself with the secrets he collected on the wealthy and powerful in the Sanctum. In the years since her escape she’s lived a life of quiet retreat with Oliver Grey, the doctor who counseled her after the traumatic events of Rigby’s farm and who later adopted her as his daughter. Though still haunted by memories of the farm, Abigail manages to carve out a simple life for herself in the countryside.

All this changes when Abigail is informed that Doctor Grey has been murdered while in the city on business. Due to his social standing in the Sanctum, Abigail finds herself invited by the Queen herself to come to the Capital City, the beating cosmopolitan heart of this closed matriarchal society.

Now, despite her own fears and social doubts, Abigail sets out with determination to find her father’s killer. It’s a perilous journey that will take her right into the turning cogs of the Sanctum's most powerful and dangerous political circles. It is a world filled with shifting allegiances and deadly secrets, where legalized assassination serves as a replacement for open war between the Ladies who lead the royal houses of the Sanctum.

The closer Abigail comes to tracking down her father’s killer the clearer it becomes that someone is pursuing her as well. As she races against the clock, coming face to face with her own worst fears and nightmares, one question continues to haunt Abigail,

Is she the hunter...or the prey?