"Life isn't all hearts and flowers. It's pain and suffering too. It's dirty little secrets buried deep in the muck and mire where the grubs and worms feed. Secrets I unbury."

Private detective Rachel Cord chases multiple threads through a labyrinth of missing persons, buried bodies, sex, new love, and an ex-lover who may be a serial killer; threads that threaten to bind Rachel within a tight cord preventing her from getting the answers she needs and saving the woman she loves.

Life looks bright to private detective Rachel Cord. She has a new lover. Nasty memories are safely buried. She has a new job. The job seems simple enough: find a man and deliver some papers. But for Rachel Cord, life is never simple. Finding this man means crossing the river again and facing the demons of her personal hell. She does it to convince herself she's in control; that's she's still tough enough to take on life's nasties.

One job leads to another - find another man - keeping Rachel on the wrong side of the river to become entangled with a sexy bartender thus endangering her budding relationship. Then, like a ghost from the past, the police are looking for Rachel's ex-lover, Karen Tanaka. Has Karen returned, and is she murdering other women? Rachel races to find the answers and prove, once again, that she's "still a bitch"!