Jessica Chamberlain and her search-and-rescue dog, Luke, hunt for lost people in the Tidewater area of Virginia. But that's a side hustle: Jess's work as a private investigator pays the bills. Right now, she's looking for a girl missing for twenty years and the truth about a man's suicide. When someone runs her off the road and her house burns down, she could take the hint and leave-but she won't.

Regrouping in a fleabag motel far from her friends, Jess battles loneliness and anxiety. When a rich man in Norfolk asks her to find his runaway wife, Jess happily accepts his hefty advance. Soon she's on the Eastern Shore, between sea and sky, bay and ocean, the present and the past. Will Jess find the woman before fear finds them both?