Touch & Go

Investigator Tessa Leoni needs only ten minutes inside an upscale Back Bay townhouse to know something is badly wrong. The signs point to an abduction, and a carefully planned one, the kind carried out by people who know what they are doing. The best outcome she can hope for is that an entire family has been taken. The worst is not something she wants to say aloud. The family in question is the Denbes: a powerful CEO, his devoted wife, and their sweet young daughter. From the outside they look like a magazine spread. The deeper Tessa digs, though, the more she finds that each of them is keeping a dark secret, and those secrets may explain why this household was targeted and what the kidnappers want. Tessa has seen what lies can do to a family, and she brings that history to the case. What she lacks is any idea where the Denbes are, or whether any of them are still alive. She also has to deal with rigid federal agents and local police who guard their turf, and every delay shrinks the odds of finding the family in time. Touch & Go is a fast-moving thriller by Lisa Gardner that pulls apart the image of a perfect family while a clock runs down on its missing members.