After two years of pandemic people are touchy. Violence is everywhere. Fear and anxiety run wild. Jess has a scary encounter with a man in the woods and then a blow-up that threatens her closest friendships. Her husband, FBI Agent Scott Cooper, investigates a school shooting he thinks might be the start of a bigger terrorism campaign.
A lead in that case takes Scott and Jess to the mountains of western Virginia as a snowstorm moves in. While there, a school bus disappears. The driver is found dead by the road, but where is the bus and, more importantly, the kids?
Jess and Scott, along with Jess's dog Luke, join the sheriff in the hunt. The elderly Miss Etta provides a clue but is she reliable? Scott's intelligence, Jess's grit, and Nate's wisdom all must come into play to save the kids. In the end, Nate's comment that 'People ain't always what they seem,' proves dead accurate.
Jessica Cooper and her SAR dog Luke are called out to a building collapse. What Luke discovers under the rubble shocks her. Then investigators discover that the explosion was intentional and link it to a series of other bombings. Jess's husband Scott joins an FBI/ATF task force searching for the suspect.
While Scott chases the bomber, Jess continues her SAR activities. On a dark night, during a violent persistent storm, Jess sustains a horrible loss and is plunged into a pit of despair, her faith shredded.
But God isn't finished with Jess. As she slowly begins to cope, life takes a surprising, positive turn. Reenergized, she puts on her PI hat and stumbles onto a key to the bomber's identity. Soon the mad chase to find him leads her into another storm on another dark night-and another test of faith.
When Jessica Chamberlain's friend Laura takes a wrong turn in a storm, three men trap her in a dark house. The cops blow it off as a misunderstanding, but Laura's husband, Nate, is furious and Jess can't let it go. Pursuing the men nearly gets her arrested, but a link to bones her dog, Luke, finds in a Norfolk backyard confirms her suspicions. The Doyle family is up to no good.
Jess's boyfriend, FBI Special Agent Scott Cooper, travels to interview convicted killers for a bureau project. Jess loves him, but their relationship is stalled. She decides to focus elsewhere, enhancing her search and rescue skills by learning to rappel. A nasty fall derails that plan but puts her relationship back on track-until Scott's teenaged daughter, Amanda, shows up and interjects chaos into their lives.
Already stressed by that conflict, Scott isn't prepared for an explosive Kentucky prison interview. While Scott and Jess are still reeling from that shock, Amanda disappears-last seen with a boy named Doyle. A hot pursuit, a wild fight, and a bloody gun battle leave Scott clinging to life and Jess holding fast to her only hope-faith.
There is no fear in love . . . so why is Jessica still running from it?
Jessica Chamberlain and her search-and-rescue dog, Luke, hunt for lost people in the Tidewater area of Virginia. But that's a side hustle: Jess's work as a private investigator pays the bills. Right now, she's looking for a girl missing for twenty years and the truth about a man's suicide. When someone runs her off the road and her house burns down, she could take the hint and leave-but she won't.
Regrouping in a fleabag motel far from her friends, Jess battles loneliness and anxiety. When a rich man in Norfolk asks her to find his runaway wife, Jess happily accepts his hefty advance. Soon she's on the Eastern Shore, between sea and sky, bay and ocean, the present and the past. Will Jess find the woman before fear finds them both?
After a tragic loss, Jessica Chamberlain changes jobs, moves, and adopts a rowdy German shepherd. The two begin training with a Virginia search-and-rescue group. The group's training director, Nathan Tanner, is a former military working dog handler with scars of his own and he quickly picks up on Jess's ongoing anxiety. After the unexpected discovery of a body in the woods, Jess and her dog and Nate are drawn into the FBI's search for an abductor targeting women. Tormented by her past and terrified of the future, Jess still forges ahead. Can the secrets of her late father give her the courage she needs to continue?
