No one knows that Alice Hardy is alone and walking the dark streets of Chicago after leaving her lover's apartment. So when a man drags her into an alley at knifepoint, she knows nobody will come to her rescue. Forced into a fight for survival, Alice leaves the man desperately wounded by his own knife and flees with her life. When Alice tells her lover and they rush back to the alley, the ground is bare. There is no wounded attacker. There is no body. There is no blood. There is no knife. There is nothing to report to the police.

But unbeknownst to Alice, one other person knows what happened in the alley: Owen Pall, a private detective slumming it with unsavoury divorce work. Hired to tail a possibly straying husband, Owen followed the man to the alley and witnessed the thwarted assault and saved the man's life.

Jake Hinkson weaves a noirish tale of desperate people, whose intertwining secrets and motives will lead to a web of lies, blackmail, and dead bodies