Two decades of secrets, one killer on the loose, and a town haunted by its darkest sins—can they escape the past before it claims them all?
Two decades ago, a sleepy New England town is torn apart by murder when a group of teens lure their unsuspecting victim to a lakeside beach. The prosecution's witness is the troubled fifteen-year-old Lacey Watkins, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Haunted by the ghosts of her family's past, Lacey has returned to this place of scandal. With the help of her sister Terri, she is starting over. With nowhere left to run, Lacey is struggling to build a life…until her sister is found dead. When she discovers crime-scene photos of two murders mixed in with her work, Lacey suddenly finds herself at the center of a police investigation and the target of a killer's obsession.
After twenty years with the New Haven Police Department, the ex-Detective Gavin MacFadyen is starting a new career as a private investigator. But when his ex-partner is killed in a suspicious 'hit-and-run', he is pulled back into that world of corrupt cops, child prostitution, gang murders, and crime bosses who litter the shore with headless corpses.
Gavin has secrets of his own, but Lacey needs an ally, now more than ever…because the murderous fury of an avenger is about to destroy them both.

May McGoldrick, Nik James, and Jan Coffey are pen names for USA Today bestselling authors Nikoo Kafi and Jim McGoldrick. Together, they have crafted over fifty historical, contemporary, and Western novels, as well as two works of nonfiction.
Garnering numerous awards over the years, their work has been published in print, digital, and audiobook form by Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins/Avon, MIRA Books, St. Martin's Press, Heinemann, Sourcebooks, Macmillan Audio, Dreamscape Media, and Tantor Audio. Their stories have also been translated into over a dozen languages.
Jim holds a PhD in sixteenth-century Scottish and English literature. As a tenured Associate Professor of English at DeSales University, he taught literature and creative writing before pursuing a full-time writing career. Despite her love of writing, Nikoo's education and training were in engineering, and she worked in robotics and submarine shipbuilding before her change in career. In addition to writing, Nikoo served for seven years as the State of Connecticut Education Connection Writer-in-Residence, developing and teaching an inclusive creative writing program for middle school students.