BURN IT DOWN

Gemma Farris built her investigation the same way she built everything — methodically, alone, without asking for help she wasn't going to get. Three years into a cold case for her missing daughter, she has burned through her marriage, her savings, and every institutional channel available. The detective's file is inactive. The evidence is three years old. She is out of options and refuses to stop.

Then her phone lights up at 7:11 on a Tuesday morning. A location. Four words: Come alone. Say nothing.

What she finds isn't a lead. It's Declan Rourke — the man the detective spent two years chasing as the primary suspect. He says he was framed. She says she doesn't care. They're going to find her daughter and burn down whoever took her, and they are the only resource the other one has.

Before she can keep this transactional — there's the rest stop where she says the thing about the forty-minute delay and he gives her exactly the right response, a shared bed-and-breakfast room because the city has a homecoming weekend and neither of them comments on the arrangement, the night she opens the wrong file on the shared drive and spends thirty-seven minutes sitting with the proof she's been acting on conviction before she had it, the moment in a barn doorway when she calls her daughter's name and her voice is very steady, and the thing Wren says when she finally looks up.

She's spent three years performing fine because she can't afford not to. He's spent three years being destroyed in the public record for something he didn't do, waiting for her to be ready.

Dark kidnapping thriller where the case breaks open and the grief underneath the anger is always present. The kind of book you stay up reading because you can't sleep until you know she finds her.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ MTS > Crime Fiction > Kidnapping sits at 8.8 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream) with 139 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — and is on a documented upward trajectory, one of the top four trending growth categories in all of MTS right now

→ Dual-category positioning across Kidnapping + Vigilante Justice — titles holding both simultaneously are the current ceiling performers; this package is architecturally built for both

→ Romance > Romantic Suspense > Mystery is up 67% over the last 12 months with 210 daily sales per top 20 title — the heat-flexible architecture opens a third bestseller lane without changing the book

→ The wrongfully-accused hero is an underused premise in the kidnapping lane — a structural differentiator with strong crossover into the dark romance audience that's actively looking for this

→ Dual first-person alternating POV is the highest-performing structure on BookTok for thriller/romance crossover — drives the "his chapter vs. her chapter" content that travels organically

TROPES: • Wrongfully Accused Hero • Vigilante Justice • Unlikely Alliance • Morally Grey Hero • Mother Searching for Missing Child • Cold Case • Dark Slow Burn • Enemy of My Enemy • Forbidden Attraction • She Believed Him Before She Had Proof • Two People Who Are Each Other's Only Resource • Dual POV Thriller • The Grief Underneath the Anger • HFN Ending

HEAT LEVEL: Open Door / High Ceiling — heat-flexible build; intimacy scenes are flagged for adjustment; emotional grounding at every level; consent architecture clean at sweet through steamy

Perfect for fans of: Noelle W. Ihli, Kendra Elliot, Mary Burton, and Sarah Alderson

WHAT'S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with triple-category positioning (Kidnapping, Vigilante Justice, Romantic Suspense crossover), competitive analysis, and full Suspense Architecture: hidden timeline, reveal order, fair-play audit, and misdirection map

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with main characters, supporting cast of 6, the investigation apartment and industrial base city settings, rural property final-act location, six-week road thriller timeline, dual first-person voice system with distinct verbal patterns for Gemma (analytical-observational, lists internally, never says "feel") and Declan (operational-spatial, military-inflected precision), heat-flexible intimacy architecture, and series seeds for 3 future books

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 28 chapters + epilogue with emotional beats, word count targets, scene breakdowns, fair-play clues flagged in situ, and Dial the Heat™ scenes marked at both levels

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — detailed writing instructions for every chapter with tone, pacing, heat-level instructions at sweet and steamy ceiling, and distinct voice guidance for alternating POV

⭐️ Marketing Copy — Amazon listing with categories and keywords, back cover copy, social media posts, newsletter announcement, reader magnet concepts, dual Ideogram cover prompts (A and B), and series launch strategy

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — keyword strategy, launch positioning, pricing rationale, cover direction, and series read-through strategy

One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.