The mercy of the night

the long version

Phelan Tierney helps people who hope to start their lives over. When a young woman he's taken under his wing disappears, the former lawyer devotes himself to finding her, despite her puzzlingly unhelpful family and his own ghosts. Jacquelina Garza has been to hell and back. Abducted and tortured by a child predator when she was eight years old, she still, years later, bears the scars of the incident and its aftermath, including a very public trial. Her teenage life takes an even steeper downward spiral when she's drawn into a murder case that threatens to tear apart her hometown of Rio Mirada, the gateway to Napa Valley's opulence. Can these two wayward souls find redemption amid the convenient lies and difficult truths that have followed them for so long?