The Locard Institute is a state-of-the-art forensic research center where experts from around the world come together to confront and solve the world's most challenging and perplexing crimes. When Dr. Ellie Carr arrives for her first day as an instructor at the prestigious facility, the buildings glimmer amid the brilliant fall foliage on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But within hours a colleague, Dr. Barbara Wright, is found dead on the floor...

When the pregnant daughter of software pioneer Martin Post, the third richest man in America, is murdered, expert forensic analysts Ellie Carr and Rachael Davies, called in to investigate, are drawn into the Posts' increasingly dangerous family dynamic todetermine who-and what-is at the heart of the crime.