Grace Rampling, sweating miserably in the newsroom during an oppressive heatwave, desperately misses her new lover. Three weeks after she first held Sergeant Adam Davis in her arms, he's in California at a conference . . . and it's the worst possible timing.An SUV crushes a Smart Car. Grace's friend Suzanne discovers a dog shot dead in an alley. Then, as a cataclysmic thunderstorm rocks the dark night, someone commits a terrible crime. With no Adam in her bed, and faced with a power outage, Grace helps Suzanne brave wild weather to reach the police. Neither suspected the crime would prove more hideous than they could have imagined. Or that it was just the beginning.Adam can think only of making love to Grace, but he returns to find his city gripped by a taut and watchful fear. As the police force's most intuitive crime solver, he must grapple with his PTSD - and delay a full relationship with Grace - to find a murderer.