Every killer leaves a clue. This one leaves a watch.

They shouldn't work together. DS Susie Drummond is the detective trying to keep a serial killer off Edinburgh's front pages while her boss watches the clock. Doug McGregor is the journalist who already knows more than he should and isn't above using it. They've struck an uneasy truce built on mutual leverage and something that might, on a good day, resemble trust. It's not much. But it's all they've got.

Three men have been strangled in Edinburgh's wealthiest neighbourhoods. Each left with a brand-new Omega watch on his wrist. Each missing his right shoe. No forensics, no witnesses, no obvious connection between the dead–only the quiet, deliberate signature of a killer with deep pockets and a compulsion that goes far beyond anything Susie has seen before. The kind of case that could make a career. Or end one.

As Susie works the evidence and Doug works his contacts, the investigation pulls them deeper into a world of old Edinburgh money, buried secrets and a darkness that has been hiding in plain sight for a decade. Because this killer isn't hunting at random—he's been watching. He has a question that can only be answered at the moment of death. And he's already chosen the person who's going to give it to him.