Socialite Renata Hunter Carr washes up dead on a California beach.

Two lovers, their deaths separated by 30 years and 10,000 miles. Inextricably linked by a secret someone will kill again to protect.

Senior CIA analyst Mariah Bolt never shared his fans' enthusiasm for her late, famous father, Ben Bolt. The world revered him as a literary genius. Mariah remembered only the man who abandoned his pregnant wife and seven-year-old daughter to run off to Europe with another woman, Renata Hunter Carr.

But like it or not, Mariah became the reluctant guardian of the Ben Bolt legacy, never knowing she'd inherited a ticking time bomb.

Widowed, preoccupied with her troubled teenager, Mariah is about to leave on a much-needed vacation when she is handed an urgent assignment, to lure a man into betraying his country. There's only one hitch: To get to the man, she has to cross paths with her father's old lover.

Suddenly the past is back with a vengeance. And everything Mariah thought she knew about Ben's life and death is called into question.

Before she can find out the truth, one old friend will betray her. Another will be murdered. And her father's lover, who tried to warn Mariah about a danger she only half understood herself, will end up dead on a beach.

Then Mariah's 15-year-old daughter goes missing, and though the police will be convinced she's a runaway, Mariah fears she's become a pawn in a deadly game. Like Ben and Renata, Mariah is about to be reminded of one of the terrifying rules of international intrigue: In high stakes games, the innocent are sacrificed for the bigger prize.