Josie Quinn
Josie Quinn is not just the protagonist of this novel, she is the character which this novel was written to launch as into her own series of crime thrillers. Her introduction could not be much less promising. She is a detective currently on suspension for using excessive force. Never mind that she had a reason anyone could understand for using such force; cops should be expected to play by the same rules as everyone else at the very least. In addition to the suspension, Josie is dealing with a difficult marriage, rekindling an old high school flame, and the unsolved disappearance of a young woman from her small hometown.
Isabelle Coleman
Isabelle is a seventeen-year-old girl who has gone missing without a trace. Josie is watching a TV screen installed on the gas pump at the Stop and Go when she learns that Isabelle’s cell phone has been discovered in the woods not far from her home. The disgraced detective is particularly perturbed by the fact that five days had passed between the girl going missing and evidence that she had actually been abducted. She has even more reason to be concerned about the potential of Isabelle being found alive. The local police force is simply not up to the task. Eventually, something else about Coleman’s disappearance will come to bother Josie even more. Isabelle is not the only woman from the area to be abducted in recent years.
Ginger Blackwell
Six years earlier a thirty-two-year-old mom with three kids named Ginger Blackwell from the neighboring town of Bowersville had disappeared one day after making a trip to the grocery store. She had obviously made it to the store because her groceries along with her purse, keys, and phone were found in her vehicle which had been abandoned on the side of the road. Three weeks later Ginger Blackwell reappeared even more mysteriously than she had disappeared: bound and naked on the shoulder of the interstate. Ginger claims that the last person she can remember seeing was the person who lured her to the side of the road and drugged her. The rest of her entire abduction experience was like being held prisoner in a completely black box.
Misty
Misty is younger enough than Josie to have likely been entering high school the year Josie was graduating. She is currently employed at the small town’s only strip club, Foxy Tails, and Josie suspects she is popular with the clientele because Misty still retains a girlishly innocent quality. One thing is for certain: Misty became especially popular with Josie’s husband, Ray. Things get really complicated when it seems to Josie that Misty is inextricably and mysterious tied to the string of disappearing women. This also means, of course, that Ray is somehow connected as well. A fact that becomes all too clear when Ray assertively urges Josie to stop pursuing her private investigation into the matter.
Ramona
Isabelle Coleman’s history teacher, Dirk Spencer, is sitting in the passenger seat of a Cadillac Escalade when—as things often do for people sitting in an Escalade—everything suddenly goes straight to haywire. Dirk is shot and just before losing consciousness he whispered a single word: Ramona. For much of the bulk of the novel, this character’s appearance is mainly in the form of the questions like “Who is Ramona?” or, on occasion, an assertion along the lines of “There is no Ramona.” On the other hand, there is Ginger Blackwell who claims that the person who lured her to the side of the road and proceeded to drug her into unconsciousness was actually a woman. She called herself Ramona.
