On a morning like any other, Rachel drops her daughter Kylie at the bus stop and continues with her day. But a phone call from an unknown number changes everything. A woman on the line informs her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a ransom, and find another child to abduct. This is no ordinary kidnapping: the caller is a mother herself, whose son has been taken, and if Rachel doesn't do as she's told, the boy will die. Rachel is now part of The Chain, a scheme that turns victims into criminals—and is making someone else very rich in the process. The rules are simple, the moral challenges impossible; find the money fast, find your victim, and then commit an act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just 24 hours ago. But what the masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children... and it turns out that kidnapping is only the beginning.