The Engine Idles at Dusk

Seven months after her sister Cordelia vanished, journalist Maren Calder parks her Buick beneath a broken neon sign and steps back into the only town that ever knew how to keep a secret. The motel owner, Hollis Tate, watches her arrive. Sheriff Owen Pruitt offers a handshake and a lie. EMT Bart the EMT is already zipping his bag shut before the next body cools. Maren came for answers, but the answers are stitched into old recordings, a single photograph, and a stack of documents her own family tried to bury. Each conversation peels back another layer of a case the state troopers want closed and a judge has already moved past. With Egan Brace's name surfacing in texts no one will explain, Maren must decide how deep she's willing to dig, and what she's willing to lose when the silence finally breaks.