Hal Vickers is dead on his own stockroom floor, the register drawer is empty, and his nephew is in county by lunch.
Wade Kessler built the store's point-of-sale system two years ago. When the widow calls him to get it running again before Monday, he finds the machine wiped clean - and one entry the wipe didn't reach. A card sale. Eleven forty-seven at night. Three minutes after the coroner says Hal stopped breathing.
Wade knows what that means. Somebody rang a sale on a dead man's register, and they did it for a reason.
Caprock PD has its man and wants Wade to go home. His best client tells him he's going to get shot. His own daughter is the only one who can get him the piece he can't reach. And every time Wade pulls a thread, it costs him - a client, a friendship, a bone.
He's spent twenty years reading what machines write down when nobody's looking.
He's never once turned that on his own house.