On a straight stretch of North Carolina highway, in a land of military families, double-wide trailers, and fading farms, a wife beater and miscreant is found shot to death in his pickup truck with beer cans around his body. For Judge Deborah Knott, it means her husband of one month, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, has a mystery to unravel. Then from across state lines Dwight gets an urgent phone call from his son - a boy who needs his dad even more than Dwight can know.While his colleagues pursue the murder case, Dwight soon finds himself standing in his ex-wife's chaste bedroom, exploring her world of volunteer work for an antebellum historical society and friendships with women who were her best friends in high school. The problem is, for all her social connections and deep, far-reaching Southern roots, she has disappeared into thin air.Deciding to join her husband, Deborah travels to Virginia. Now, as a stranger in another woman's house, she sees a side of Dwight she never knew, contends with feelings she doesn't want to confront, and senses something dangerous stalking a boy and his mother. But while she and Dwight pry open the most intimate secrets of a life, the one thing Deborah is not prepared for is the ferocious darkness lurking just beneath the surface of a seemingly genteel life - or the danger that is waiting just for her. Read Less