Molly and Niel Sloan and their neighbors in a small California mountain town encounter a threat that transforms their peaceful streets into a ghostly labyrinth happening around them.
Joey Sapphire wakes next to a dead man, the son of the American Ambassador to Trinidad, in a boat at anchor. It quickly dawns on her that she has to get rid of the body, because it looked like she did it and they hang murderers in Trinidad. So she weighs it down and drops it overboard. But she knows she's not safe, because the killer knows about her.
Javier Falcon, still struggling with the psychological trauma of his last case, investigates an apparent suicide in a wealthy neighborhood and becomes increasingly alarmed when subsequent suicides have suspicious links to the first.
Natalie Lindstrom was once one of an elite group of investigators with the power to interview the dead victims of violent crime. But now Natalie has had enough. Enough of the violence. Enough of the darkness that has already gotten too close to her five-year-old daughter. Yet as she tries to build a new life and protect her child from the world she has left, Natalie still knows injustice when she sees it. And she knows that in a high-profile California trial, a young man is getting away with murder. The case against Prescott Hyland Jr. is airtight–until a corrupt Violet delivers devastating testimony against another man. Now Natalie is being drawn back into her former career and a danger far worse than she can imagine. For while one killer is being tried in a courtroom, another has gone horribly free: to unleash a storm of vengeance–aimed straight for the heart of Natalie’s new life. Because, in the world of the Violets, sometimes your past can literally come back to haunt you. . . .
Conn O'Connor struggles to find a connection between a bloodstained car, a missing yacht, and a stolen infant heir, a mystery that deepens years later when fledgling reporter Irene Kelly explores a young man's claim that he is the missing baby.