Content Warning: This section of the guide references domestic abuse and drug addiction.

It is Tuesday, February 22. New York’s JFK Airport is bustling. Eva James walks through Terminal 4. She is there to find a woman who is a total stranger. All she has is the woman’s name and flight number. Eva is determined to disappear: “People disappear every day” (2). She has been thinking about this plan for some time and considers it meticulous. It is then that she sees a black town car pull up to the terminal entrance and a woman step out.

It is Monday, February 21. Claire Cook, the wife of a wealthy, charismatic New York philanthropist—Rory, the scion of a prominent political family who is preparing to announce a run for the United States Senate—is busy completing the details for a trip to Detroit the following day. Ostensibly, she will be promoting a charitable foundation run by her husband’s family. However, Claire has secretly been planning for months to use the trip to Detroit as a cover to finally break free of her 10-year marriage to her abusive husband, whom no one suspects of such violence. When both her mother and her sister died in a car accident more than 14 years ago, Claire felt alone and was susceptible to Rory’s charms.