Three years ago Calder Rusk came home to his wife dead, and his father, the Secretary of Defense, closed the door on him: the statement was already out. He has been sleeping in a ferry shelter ever since, drinking, wearing a watch with her photo inside the lid. Then a bullet misses the President at a memorial for the hundred and ten killed at Cairn Quay, and Calder is the only one who saw the second shooter out on the water. They hand him back a rifle and a wife: Tamsin Voss wears his ring so he can reach the archive where her file was quietly deleted. His brother Dorian deleted it, and Dorian is the one who killed Lenora. Framed with drugs, tried and sentenced to die, Calder waits until a witness says in open court what he was paid to bury. In a hotel ballroom his brother raises a gun again, and this time Calder does not miss. What he cannot do is sign the paper. He plays his wife's voice one last time, turns the ring straight, and takes Tamsin's hand onto the ferry anyway.
