On a bright June morning, the reclusive billionaire Adrian Mercer is

found dead in a half-dug grave on his own unfinished Hamptons estate,

his watch stopped at precisely 3:41 in the morning. The county police

have a suspect, a confession, and a tidy story to tell. The retired

detective Mathias Wouters has something a great deal less convenient:

a frightened young woman who swears she heard a dead man calmly giving

orders a full nineteen minutes after his heart was meant to have

stopped.

Brought in merely to certify the death, Wouters and his reluctant

companion begin pulling at a single loose thread — and find that it

runs back two decades and a hundred miles, into a buried life that was

never meant to be found. Nothing at all was taken from the house that

night. That, in the end, is the whole of the problem.Brought in merely to certify the death, Wouters and his reluctant

companion begin pulling at a single loose thread — and find that it

runs back two decades and a hundred miles, into a buried life that was

never meant to be found. Nothing at all was taken from the house that

night. That, in the end, is the whole of the problem.

A debut mystery of cold money, older secrets, and the one thing a

vanishing man can never quite bring himself to give up.