There is nothing that Simone won’t do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal…
Spoilers ahead, scroll down at your own risk!
Please enjoy a spoiler-filled recap of the book, with my personal thoughts and feelings interspersed:
- Part I: The Ransom
- Simone Seaborn is a 43-year-old British restauranteur, wife, and mother. Her daughter, Lucy, is 18, and just spent the summer at a summer camp in Texas.
- Simone has flown to Texas to spend a week camping in the Texas wilderness with Lucy, and then they’ll fly back to England together.
- After some flight & travel delays including missing luggage and a Border Patrol officer who helps her find it, Simone arrives at the Airbnb Lucy has gotten for their first night. It’s a secluded cabin and Lucy has already checked in.
- They reunite, chat, and then go to bed, both exhausted after midnight.
- Simone wakes up the next morning to find Lucy missing, a knot of her hair stuck in the doorframe, and a burner phone.
- The burner phone receives texts from an unknown number, showing proof of life of Lucy. The texts then direct Simone through the following steps, one by one, with the demand to never call the police (obviously):
- Go to a church in the middle of the night
- Obtain a new burner phone that was hidden for her
- Get on a day bus to Mexico
- Find a specific abandoned building, break in to it, find the hidden backpack with 6 bricks of cocaine, and bring the backpack back across the border.
- Bring the backpack to a location and exchange it for Lucy.
- After the first text, Simone calls her husband (and Lucy’s father) Damien. He demands she call the police, and Simone stops telling him everything that’s going on. Damien works on getting flights to Texas and gathering some ransom money while Simone follows the rest of the instructions.
- Simone does not tell Damien she’s going to Mexico.
- Simone successfully finds the backpack, but gets spooked by a police drive-by, takes off running, and loses one brick without realizing it.
- She then hikes back to the bus depot and gets back on the bus to go back into the US with the drugs.
- There’s two brief scares on the bus. One is a very nosy British man who keeps checking in on Simone, and the second is the Border Patrol drug dogs who search the whole bus. Simone briefly connects with a female Border Patrol agent who calms her nerves by talking about her own daughter.
- But Simone is not really that calm because as soon as she’s back across the border, she buys a gun.
- Simone arrives for the drug and daughter exchange. A man pulls up in a vehicle, takes the backpack, discovers there’s only 5 bricks of cocaine, and loses his mind.
- Simone can hear kicking from the trunk of the car, and assumes Lucy is tied up in the back seat, ala every action movie ever. She offers to pay the difference, but the man gets increasingly aggitated and tries to drive away.
- Desperate to save her daughter, Simone shoots the man, then opens the trunk to find Lucy, actually tied up in the trunk and trying to kick out the headlights like a good girl.
- The driver is still alive, and in a wave of regret, Simone instructs Lucy to use a perfectly placed payphone to dial 911 and ask for help. In a series of chaotic events, Simone ends up talking to the operator in her clearly British accent and takes ownership of the shooting, does not give her identity, but does explain the kidnapping.
- The 911 operator forwards her to the local sheriff who clearly does not believe Simone. (For your mental image, Simone is standing on the side of a rural Texas highway, calling the police from a payphone while a man bleeds out in front of her, trying to convince the police over the phone that it was self-defense).
- Then a second car pulls up. Simone is still on the phone when Lucy shoots at the car, assuming it’s another cocaine-drop-related-thug. However, it is actually an off-duty cop who heard the shots, putting both women in felony territory.
- And so even though they don’t know the man is a cop, they run.
- To summarize: This part was actual insanity, with a lot of American stereotypes built in. The plot and its pacing had me fully invested, but the drug trafficking felt like I was watching an episode of any police procedural on TV in 2008.
- Part II: Two Fugitives
- Simone and Lucy take off for the Del Rio airport immediately, convinced they’ll be able to just fly home and leave all of this behind them. They drive for a few hours, with Simone grilling Lucy on her time being held hostage.
- Lucy never saw her kidnapper’s face or heard their voice. They would make Lucy wear a blindfold and never spoke, so Lucy had barely any information. She had heard a younger woman call out and identify herself as the kidnapper’s daughter, but that’s all Lucy had to go on.
- After talking about the ordeal, Lucy falls asleep and Simone tries to contact Damien.
- He switches their Whatsapp to have disappearing messages and tells her to check the news.
- Simone discovers that Lucy shot a police officer, and that footage of her and Lucy has been released to the public.
- She immediately realizes she and Lucy will never be allowed on a plane and need a new plan of action.
- After sharing this information delicately with Lucy, they decide to go on the run, collect their own evidence of the kidnapping, and turn themselves in when they have reasonable proof. This is where I decided this book was insane. However, I vowed to see it all the way through because McAllister’s twists are usually worth it.
- Lucy knows of a small town called Terlingua and says they should hide out there.
- They drive for a few more hours before hearing police sirens. They pull over and hide the car, and are faced with the reality that they’re sitting ducks and decide to HIKE to Terlingua, which will take days.
- Then there’s a traveling montage with them going through multiple stages of grief while doing exactly what they planned in the beginning, camping in the Texas wilderness.
- In the nights, Simone successfully messages Damien using their restaurant’s Instagram DMs. They both have log-ins, and message each other in the internal chat.
- Damien tells her the police have him under surveillance and tells Simone he’s publicly pretending to be mad at Simone so the police don’t suspect he’s in communication with her. They chat and try to come up with a plan.
- Lucy tells Simone she’s found a lawyer in Terlingua that might be willing to work on their case. He also has a house for rent that they can stay in.
- Simone decides to rent the house and vet the lawyer, James Moody, in person.
- The two women arrive in Terlingua and immediately meet James. It’s clear he knows who they are, helps them get settled, and leaves them to approach him in their own time.
- To summarize: This part was definitely a bridge between two major plot points, but added some intensity and dispair.
- Part III: Three Fugitives
- Then Damien appears in Terlingua. He insists he wasn’t followed and lists the extreme measures he took to evade the police and arrive in the tiny town.
- James works with the family to try to get more answers.
- Damien takes their lack of evidence in stride and starts researching fake identities to get them out of the US and into a smaller country.
- There is a huge lull at this point, with a lot of waiting and arguing. Lucy is determined that James will find something to save them all. Damien is convinced they have to move to the Bahamas and live there forever. Simone is wracked with guilt and is also still the most pragmatic of the three (she’s preparing for jail time).
- Then the police raid James’s actual house next door. This is the final push they need, and Lucy finally agrees to the Bahamas.
- They make it to the port, through customs, and onto the cruise ship that’ll take them to the island.
- But the ship is detained, then boarded by police.
- Damien quickly tells Simone that the police said over and over again to him that if Simone pleads guilty to everything, they’ll let Lucy go completely.
- And so Simone immediately gives herself up, is arrested, and taken to prison. (This happens in one chapter. It gave me whiplash!)
- Lucy and Damien visit as much as possible and her court hearing is set.
- To summarize: This section truly gave me whiplash. Within a few chapters, the world has been spun left, right, upside down, and back right side up again.
- Part IV: The Prisoner
- James Moody comes to visit and tells Simone she doesn’t have to take a plea deal. She explains why she is, and James accepts her reasoning, and offers to still be her lawyer.
- James has been digging into the case for weeks, but finally cracks it. The female border patrol agent, Michaela Wyatt, who chatted Simone up on the day bus from Mexico is the person who kidnapped Lucy (this twist got a thumbs up from me. Unique, unexpected, could still make total sense.)
- As a border patrol agent, she could control where/who the drug dogs searched and could disregard any alerts she wanted to. Makes perfect sense for a drug smuggling operation. But they still don’t know why Lucy and Simone were targeted.
- James continues to research and build a case as Simone’s trial gets closer.
- Then the morning of the trial arrives. It’s the last time Simone can see Lucy, but Lucy never shows up. Simone is terrified something happened to her, and starts panicking.
- To summarize: This was truly the most realisitic part of the book, and I was really excited to see how the Michaela Wyatt twist would go.
- Part V: The Kidnapper
- WARNING: This is where I get beyond frustrated.
- Lucy was in the home of Michaela Wyatt, ready to kidnap her daughter to blackmail Michaela into testifying for Simone.
- Like seriously. This is the big twist. A teenager kidnapping a teenager. But don’t worry! The daughter knows her mom is a really bad lady, and offers to just fully go along with Lucy’s idea.
- And she’s actually known what her mom was doing the whole time! She was just to scared to ever say anything.
- And it’s all just a power trip! Her mom has kidnapped multiple kids from the camp Lucy went to and successfully blackmailed their parents into the same exact rigamarole, with ZERO issues!
- If only Lucy and Simone hadn’t SHOT people, everything would’ve been fine!!
- But the daughter wants it to end, so she helps stage a bunch of sad proof-of-life photos, and her mom snaps to attention immediately.
- Like literally bursts into the courthouse, sits her ass on the witness stand, and confesses to everything. Because that’s how a criminal court proceeding works!!
- To summarize: This section had me absolutely fuming. I’ve never been so disappointed in a McAllister twist in my life!!
- Part VI: Home
- And then Lucy, Simone, and Damien go home and live happily ever after.
- Literally. Literally that’s the ending of the book.
- To summarize: It pissed me off.
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