In Unmarked, PI Marti Starova's drug charges and her secretary's heartbreak arrive on the same Monday. Federal Agent Heather Blair put the cuffs on Marti after a sex club raid and a murder, and now Lori Harring, the only person who keeps Marti's life from complete collapse, needs something Marti's never been good at giving: help that matters.
Lori's father, Detective Brad Harring, has spent seven years drowning in a case he can't solve and won't abandon. Elsa Mendoza, twenty-three, found dead in her Georgetown apartment with her organs shredded like confetti and her skin perfect as porcelain. The medical examiner called it "undetermined." Brad calls it unfinished. Marti calls it interesting.
Between court appearances and chasing the Baker Center fraud case, where a mysterious book club facilitator named Ashlie Gaston has disappeared, Marti digs into Elsa's death with the methodical fury of someone who sees what others miss.
Then there's Penelope Graham, who lives in Elsa's old apartment and has neon-streaked hair, a camera collection that would make a stalker jealous, and an immediate interest in Marti that starts horizontal and turns homicidal. Their brief encounter spirals into bullets through Marti's car, a decapitated cat in her parking space, and the growing suspicion that Penelope knows more about Elsa's death than she's admitting.
While Marti and Lori reconstruct Elsa's last days using visualization tech and old-fashioned legwork, Falls City does what it does best: rot from the inside out. Corrupt cops carve up territories. The rain never stops. And somewhere in the evidence everyone else overlooked, there's a murder method that baffled experts for seven years.
As Penelope's obsession escalates and Marti's court date looms, the investigation reveals something worse than an unsolved homicide: proof that someone was watching Elsa for months before she died, drilling spy holes through walls, learning her patterns, waiting for the perfect moment.
In a city where the most dangerous predators are the ones you invite inside, Marti's racing to prove Elsa's death wasn't impossible, just perfectly disguised. But solving it might cost her the license, Lori, and the life she's barely holding together.
