John Tait finds his wife and son missing when he returns from a business trip to his home in a peaceful Northumberland village. Anxiety turns to fear and dread when he receives a late-night phone call, one that re-awakens memories of terrible events ten years earlier in Slovakia and Ukraine. On a stormy November night, he sets out across the hills to find and save his family. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, new intelligence brings George Riley out of retirement. It sends him to Northumberland; to confirm and avenge the death of a colleague murdered ten years earlier in Central Europe. Lying in wait is Yugov, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian arms dealer, who knows that John Tait's wife holds the key to something he wants very badly. A deadly pursuit ensues across the hills of Northumberland, and across a very different landscape in Ukraine. One man seeks to save his family, another to avenge a colleague, and a third to obtain control of weapons that no man should ever hold.

Jake Ord and his enigmatic companion, Magda, are living in seclusion in a small inland town in the Algarve, Portugal. They each have something to hide, and to fear, but their life together is just how they want it: tranquil, safe and agreeably boring. All that changes when Jake receives a phone call late at night from an old friend in the Northumbria Police Force. He learns that crime boss Ed Fogarty has escaped from prison and is intent on exacting revenge from all those, including Jake, who helped put him there. Fogarty is also intent on recovering the £20 million missing from his last heist, money that he believes one of them still has. And he knows where Jake is living! As Fogarty ticks off the names on his hit list, Jake goes on the run across Europe, taking Magda with him. Along the way, in Portugal, Central Europe and England, Jake discovers that Magda is a woman with hidden talents as well as a hidden past. She is no stranger to the criminal underworld, or to the violent...