There is an ancient Chinese superstition that talismans in the shape of tigers protect children from harm. It's the end of a humid summer in Hong Kong and Nina Tassen is devastated when her partner, Tom, makes a trip to England but does not return to the apartment they share on The Peak. When she receives a phone call from someone claiming to be an old friend of Tom's, she clings to the possibility that he will lead her to him. But the man also wants to track him down, to find out what he knows about the death of a young girl thirty years earlier. Has Tom's past caught up with him? If so, it seems that there are others who are haunted by events of long ago. And when the real reason for his disappearance emerges, Nina is forced into conflict with a murderous mind; and mortal danger.