The Gilt Seam
Seventeen engineered glass shards arc across polished marble like a signature, and a man lies dead in their center. Glass expert Mara Voss arrives at the Meridian Gallery expecting a routine consultation. Instead, she steps past the police cordon and into a murder staged with surgical precision. Captain Dex Harlan wants her testimony sealed. Officer Sam Ketch wants her off the scene entirely. And the shards themselves keep whispering a secret Mara is the only one qualified to hear. The investigation pulls her into the gallery's gilded inner circle: curator Celeste Oduya, whose pristine exhibition now hides a killing floor; the victim's brother Julian Foss, desperate to recover something the killer may have taken; and Mayor Elise Crane, whose re-election hinges on the gallery's upcoming opening. As Mara decodes the fractured pattern, each shard a clue, each reflection a lie, she discovers the victim was unraveling a scandal that reached from city hall to her own family. Councilman Dale Rourke wants the truth buried. Arthur Voss insists it stay buried. With the killer watching her every move and forensic examiner Dr. Emil Kross cataloguing evidence that may never reach a courtroom, Mara must choose: expose the conspiracy and destroy everyone she loves, or stitch the truth into silence and let the next victim fall.