In Raven’s Quarry, Brains, the off-spectrum head of Riordan’s cyber team, is sweet on a graduate student in computer science, and for fun they submit their DNA to a commercial service to check on their family background. The results are predictable and non-startling.

 

During a boring overnight project, however, Brains decides to submit her DNA through a series of highly classified police databases. Much to his shock it produces a hit on an 18-year-old cold case, relating to the disappearance and presumed murder of the daughter of one of the firm’s Russian benefactors. Before he can share the information, the online search triggers a precipitous series of events, resulting in Brains being kidnapped and shot, execution-style.

 

Riordan commences tugging on investigative threads, leading him to uncover a global human trafficking enterprise spanning several continents and, in the process, discovers strands of the web leading back to Belfast, and his old stomping ground. Reluctantly, he has to return, and calls upon an old friend to capture the owners of the company, whom he turns over to the girl’s Ukranian father.