A troubled sixteen-year-old girl from a dysfunctional family. The dark world of drugs, pimps, and teenage prostitution. A private investigator determined to make a difference. On the surface, except for a strict, ill-tempered step-father, Bridgette Carpenter seems to have everything a teenage girl could want. She has a family, nice clothes and lives in a home in a quiet middle-class LA neighborhood. But, if everything is so right, why does everything seem so wrong? Malone finds out when he hires on to go after a runaway girl. Unfortunately, by the time Malone picks up her trail, Bridgette has already traveled to a place that seems a million miles away from her suburban home in Echo Park. Now she is caught up in the dark world of drugs, pimps, and sexual exploitation-a kind of hell on earth inhabited by people who care only about making a fast buck and savoring forbidden pleasures. Can Malone find Bridgette in time before she falls victim to appalling, unspeakable acts that will steal what's left of her childhood and perhaps her very life?