A dead man. A deadly secret. And a killer who thought he’d gotten away with murder.
J.J. Graves has seen her share of ugly things in her career as King George County’s coroner, but Wade Rivers is a corpse she won’t soon forget.
The wealthy personal trainer is found naked in his luxury condo, a knife buried where no knife should ever be, an American flag draped across his body like some twisted message. Whoever killed him didn’t just want him dead—they wanted someone to know why.
With Sheriff Jack Lawson at her side, J.J. starts digging into Wade’s complicated love life and discovers a trail of secrets, affairs, blackmail, and dangerous obsession. The deeper they go, the more people they find with reasons to want Wade dead.
But in this small-town murder mystery, everyone has something to hide—and J.J. knows better than anyone that the dead can tell a story the living would rather keep buried.