When Berkley was eight years old, a stranger walked into her home on Christmas Eve and fatally shot her mother and father while she slept. At least that's what everyone thinks.
But Berkley wasn't asleep that night and the man who murdered her parents was no stranger. He is Charlie Stone, her adoptive father, the only family she has ever known, and she has spent twenty years building walls around the truth of that night to protect him.
When Oliver and Juliette Pearce, true crime’s preeminent investigative team, call to say they’re reopening the case, Berkley has no choice but to go to Monterey. Refuse, and they solve it without her. Help, and from the inside, she can control what they find.
When she arrives, she learns the Pearces are receiving death threats. They believe the person behind them is the same man who killed her parents. She knows it's not. Berkley is left with an impossible choice: give Oliver and Juliette the information they need to solve the case and expose Charlie, or find a way to solve it herself.
But the clock is running out. Oliver Pearce has secrets too, things buried in that first case he’s spent thirty years making sure no one finds. If Berkley can uncover them before he uncovers hers, she might just be able to save Charlie after all. But the walls she's been fortifying for two decades are finally coming down. And as she gets closer to the truth, she realizes it isn't just Oliver's past the killer wants exposed. It's her own.