Deputy Coroner Clay Edison discovers that buried secrets can be deadly in this riveting thriller from a father-son team of bestselling authors who write “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King). An ID Book Club Selection Clay Edison has his hands full. He’s got a new baby who won't sleep. He’s working the graveyard shift. And he’s trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call—this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago , the man says. Or at least I think she did . It’s a little complicated . And things only get stranger from there. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.

Gloria Mendez is thirty-six, single, and hopelessly in love with her oblivious boss, a soft-spoken loner twenty years her senior. Her friends might urge her to look for someone more her age, but Gloria knows the real thing when she sees it. So when he disappears while on vacation in Mexico, it's Gloria who goes in search of him. As she follows his trail deep into the desert, she runs face-first into a staggering history of betrayal and death: the wreckage of a hidden past. Carl Perreira was not the man she thought she knew - nor was he anything she could have imagined. Her journey will teach her as much about herself as it does about Carl. And as she plunges closer to his fleeing shadow, she will find herself fighting not only for the truth, but for her life.