Van Shaw was raised to be a thief, but at the age of eighteen he abruptly abandoned the illicit life and joined the US Army, leaving behind Seattle and the grandfather who taught him the trade. But after ten years of estrangement, Van's grandfather has suddenly asked him to come home.

If my grandfather''s letter had stopped at the comma, I would have tossed it in the trash... I would have mentally told the old man to stick it, if it hadn''t been for the last three words. If you can...

Van Shaw was raised to be a thief, but at the age of eighteen he abruptly abandoned the illicit life and joined the US Army, leaving behind Seattle and the grandfather who taught him the trade. But after ten years of estrangement, Van''s grandfather has suddenly asked him to come home. He does so, only to find his grandfather shot in the head and bleeding out on the kitchen floor.

While the police focus on Van as the prime suspect, he plunges back into an underworld he had vowed never return to, putting his criminal sensibilities back to work to ferret out the attacker and unearth the shocking secret of why his grandfather called him home after so many years. But in a violent, high-stakes world where the lines between right and wrong are easily blurred, Van finds that the secrets held by those closest to him are the deadliest of all.