A phone rings at 5:07 a.m. in a Seattle houseboat…but to a number that shouldn’t exist. A man, wire-bound to a kitchen chair, is discovered in the ruins of a burned-out house. A woman, sexually abused when she was a young girl, names a presidential candidate as her abuser...and a naïve landscape gardener, relentlessly pursued by hit men, holds the key to it all. What started as a straightforward missing person case for private investigators Mallory Dimante and Jake Steiner now has them racing to work out the connection between these events.

Private Investigator Mallory Dimante has no time for a pro-bono cold case. Focused on developing the detective firm she’s building with her partner, Jake Steiner, she needs work that can keep them and their new Seattle houseboat afloat. But she can’t say no when she comes face-to-face with the victim of a devastating acid attack.

Tragedy has stalked Blake Larsen her entire life. After the violent death of her parents leaves her orphaned, her Green Beret brother Caleb is all she has left. He was there the day she graduated high school and the first person she called after she became a federal agent. Then the cops find him swinging from the rafters. The horrific discovery pushes Blake to the edge of despair. Then one of Caleb's closest friends is violently murdered outside her front door—and the killer snatches a folder from his dying fingers. It's clear Kyle was silenced moments before coming clean

In the dark woods of Olive Park, in the hills above Sacramento, a California Highway Patrol officer stumbles over a gnarled branch. But it isn’t a branch. It is an arm. Reaching up from a shallow grave. And clutched in the small, desperate hand is a single quarter. So begins one of the most exhaustive investigations in California history. Yet even with their massive resources, State and Federal authorities fail to find any trace of the killer. After two long years, the case goes cold.

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement. Until the day the police arrived at their front door. Decades later, Nora's father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way. `Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.