Alexa Glock is at a crossroads—personally and professionally. As an American working and living in New Zealand, she's come to love the place with its rugged beauty and warm, friendly people.

But there's still so much she wants to learn in her field of forensic odontology, and her professional crush in Scotland has just interviewed her for a position at the University of Edinburgh. To complicate matters, she learns that the man who professes to love her had been unfaithful to his ex-wife.

How can Alexa trust that he won't cheat on her as well if she stays? When she's called to the former gold-mining community of Arrowtown to help identify some old bones for repatriation to China, she welcomes the distraction.

As often happens when digging up the past, a mystery is unearthed: two additional skeletons are found, one with a hole through its skull, the other with a snapped neck and broken back. As Alexa attempts to open a cold-case investigation of two potential homicides, the local school principal goes missing.

Local police recruit Alexa to assist with the case and as she digs in on both sides, the secrets she uncovers make her dangerously unpopular with those who want to keep the past buried—and Alexa along with it.