Ember Watch

About this book

A wildfire is forty minutes from a Sierra foothill town when arson investigator Tess Marrero finds a body in an evacuated house: a man shot in his own living room and left for the flames. She has one burn period to work a murder the county would rather call an accident.

A megafire is forty minutes from town, and everyone is running downhill except the one person who can’t.

When a wind-driven wildfire bears down on the Sierra foothill town of Grasse Hollow, Cal Fire arson investigator Tess Marrero is sent to find where it started. Instead, in an evacuated house with the flames a ridge away, she finds a body that didn’t die in any fire. Someone shot Dale Renner in his own living room and left the door open for the blaze to do the rest.

The trouble is the fire is late. And Tess, racing a wall of flame that erases every crime scene before she can read it, has one burn period to work a murder the whole county would rather call an accident.

Six years ago Tess’s certainty sent an innocent man to prison, where he died. She swore she’d never trust a feeling over proof again. But everything she finds points one impossible way: at the most beloved man on the mountain, the contractor whose dozers are saving the town one street at a time, the friend the dead man trusted with the truth. He’s helped her at every turn. He pulled her out of the fire with his own hands. And he is steering the flames toward the last three parcels he needs.

With the dead man’s widow, a deputy who must choose between the law and the town that raised him, and the failing memory of her old mentor, Tess builds a case made entirely of ash and circumstance against a killer who’s letting a wildfire do his cleanup. To stop him, she’ll have to do the one thing that terrifies her more than the fire: be certain enough to act, and willing to be wrong out loud.

A propulsive, atmospheric crime thriller for readers of Jane Harper, Michael Connelly, and Karin Slaughter, EMBER WATCH is a race against a literal countdown bearing down on every page.