Grieving the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak reluctantly accepts a case from a suspected murderer who may or may not be innocent.

Rise the dark, these were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Markus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her, Gardland Webb, is out of prison and draws Markus to the scene he's avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a place called...

Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based Death Row defense firm, Novak's life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later, her murderer is still at large, and Novak's attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line. Now he's been all but banished, sent to Garrison, Indiana...