[Jonathan Stride 06] • The Cold Nowhere

In The Cold Nowhere , Stride returns to the icy plain of his hometown, Duluth, Minnesota, where he is confronted with a crime he cannot ignore. On the first night back in his Lake Superior cottage, Stride comes home to a break-in, and discovers a young woman hiding in his bedroom, visibly shaken and soaked through. The girl, Catalina Mateo, isn’t a stranger to Stride; she is the daughter of a woman he tried and failed to protect from a violent husband years ago, a woman he loved. Years ago, it was this girl, then a six-year-old, who hid under the porch of her family home and witnessed her mother and father brutally murdered before her.

When Cat asks for protection from Stride, protection from a mysterious person she claims is trying to kill her, Stride is driven by guilt and duty to help her, but he soon discovers she may be hiding the truth from him. His partner, Maggie, another complicated relationship, has her suspicions too, and a single question occupies the void between them: should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl? 

From the Hardcover edition.