DEA Agent Faith Nelson is supposed to be going home for Christmas.
Her father is facing heart surgery in Oakland. Her mother needs her. And Faith needs distance from Minnesota, from the shooting that made her a reluctant hero, and from the nightmares that followed.
Then a cartel accountant stops cooperating with a federal grand jury when his college-age stepdaughter disappears.
Faith is sent north to Duluth in the teeth of a winter storm, paired with a partner she does not trust and trapped in a case that keeps turning darker. The missing girl may not have been taken at all. Her roommate knows more than she is saying. A Mexican cartel executioner has entered Minnesota. And the deeper Faith digs, the less certain she becomes about who is protecting the truth, who is exploiting it, and whether the girl she has been sent to find is still alive.
With Christmas closing in and her family waiting two thousand miles away, Faith follows the trail beyond Duluth toward the frozen north shore of Lake Superior. There, the storm turns deadly. Cut off from help, hunted by men who cannot afford to let her survive, and forced to rely on instincts she no longer fully trusts, Faith must decide how much she is willing to risk for a stranger whose disappearance may be only one piece of a larger betrayal.
But Faith is already carrying the cost of one violent choice. She knows what it means to pull the trigger, to be praised for surviving, and to wake afterward with the dead still waiting in her dreams. This time, courage may not be enough. This time, doing the right thing could cost her the future she is trying to reach.
Up North is a hard-edged crime thriller about violence, survival, loyalty, and the terrible cost of doing the right thing when the cold is closing in and no one is coming fast enough. Blending authentic law-enforcement detail with relentless winter suspense, Dave Case introduces DEA Agent Faith Nelson, a determined new heroine fighting through fear, isolation, and a landscape as dangerous as the people hunting her.
