Jessie and her team of dogs are well prepared for the daring competition, but her one regret is that her longtime friend and lover, Alex Jensen, isn't there to see her off. Alex has been called home to Idaho for a family emergency and Jessie begins the big race without her biggest booster. Well along the trail, Jessie is stunned to learn that a young novice racer she met at the start has been abducted and held for ransom. The girl's distraught father has been warned that no one but Jessie Arnold is to be told--especially not the police. Feeling isolated and alone, Jessie must decide what to do in the face of terrible odds.

It's the contest of a lifetime, yet as the other mushers push toward the finish line, Jessie forges ahead in a race all her own. Unable to ignore the plight of the missing girl, she's in a life and death battle against a desperate, unknown kidnapper who will stop at nothing. Speeding through the twists and turns of the icy, broken trails, Jessie has no time for fear. For somewhere in that vast and lonely landscape, a killer waits for a chance to unleash a murderous rage on anyone who dares to get in his way.