A cryptic text brings Victoria, British Columbia, animal crimes investigator Kieran Yeats to a midnight rendezvous with a client mysteriously named Shrew. Shrew’s late . . . and when she does arrive, there’s no time for talk. She hastily throws two packages into a nearby garbage dumpster, telling Kieran, “Get the things I’ve left for you, and for God’s sake, don’t leave the others behind.” Then her VW screeches out of the parking lot, a big SUV in pursuit. The next morning, Shrew is found dead, victim of a supposed one-car traffic accident. Shrew’s death, and the packages — which contain a cat in a cloth bag, a phone, and a flash drive — launch Kieran into an investigation of Island Naturals, a respected Vancouver Island cosmetics company. The company’s reputation has been built on their claim that they do not test their products on animals, that they are “cruelty-free”. But are they? What secret did Shrew discover? And is the secret, which reaches all the way to China, so huge that someone would kill to hide it? The cat, the phone, the flash drive, ‘the others’ . . . how do these all fit together? And did they cost Shrew her life? Discovering the answer to these questions could well cost Kieran hers.