New York Times bestselling master of suspense Steve Martini returns, ensnaring defense attorney Paul Madriani in a web of terror and death being spun in the shadows of America's most sacred and secretive institution—the Supreme Court.

A writer is savagely slain while on a publicity tour—a literary provocateur who craved headlines, but whose last book may have gone too far. His revelations about secret language buried in the U.S. Constitution—and hints about an explosive missing letter of Thomas Jefferson's—may be enough to cause an irreparable tear in the fabric of the nation . . . and perhaps drove a volatile youth to homicide. But Paul Madriani thinks a troubled young man with dark connections has been chosen as a scapegoat to cover up something far deadlier that festers in America's political heart. And in the wake of the strange disappearance of a Supreme Court judge, Madriani must survive long enough to find the devastating answers hidden in the shadow of power.