A hair-raising, atmospheric thriller from the acclaimed author of the "ripping good" (The New York Times) novel Three Graves Full, inspired by the real-life unsolved theft of a seventeenth-century painting.
Twenty-eight seconds.
In less than half a minute, a home-security camera captures the hidden resolve in fourteen-year-old Carly Liddell as she fends off a vicious attack just inside her own front door. The video of her heroic escape appears online and goes viral. As the view count climbs, the lives of four desperate people will be forever changed by what's just barely visible in the corner of the shot.
Carly's stepfather is spurred to protect his darkest secret: how a stolen painting—four hundred years old, by a master of the Dutch Golden Age—has come to hang in his suburban foyer. The art dealer, left for dead when the painting vanished, sees a chance to buy back her life. And the double-crossed enforcer renews the hunt to deliver the treasure to his billionaire patrons—even if he has to kill to succeed.
But it's Carly herself, hailed as a social-media hero, whose new perspective gives her the courage to uncover the truth as the secrets and lies tear her family apart.
Dee Aldrich rebelled against her off-center upbringing when she married the most conventional man she could imagine: Patrick, her college sweetheart. But now, years later, her marriage is falling apart and she's starting to believe that her husband wants her gone...for good. Haunted by memories of her late mother Annette, a former covert operations asset, Dee reaches back into her childhood to resurrect the lessons and 'spy games' in which she learned how and when to lie. But just as she begins delving into her past to determine the course of the future, she makes a discovery that will change her life: the money that her mother left behind.
More than a year ago, mild-mannered Jason Getty killed a man he wished he'd never met. But just as he's learning to live with the undeniable reality of what he's done, police unearth two bodies on his property - neither of which is the one Jason buried. Jason races to stay ahead of the consequences of his crime, and while chaos reigns on his lawn, his sanity unravels, snagged on the agendas of a colorful cast of strangers. A jilted woman searches for her lost fiance, a fringe dweller runs from a past that's quickly gaining on him, and a couple of earnest local detectives piece clues together - all in the shadow of a dead man who had it coming.
