The Tidewater Ledger

Marisol Vane, 29, a sharp-tongued ship-salvage appraiser in fog-bound Port Calder, learns at her grandmother's funeral that the family's century-old shipping firm has been signed over to her uncle Desmond, using a will she knows is forged. Worse, the forgery pins a decades-old cargo fire, one that killed eleven dockworkers, on her late father. To clear his name and reclaim the company before Desmond sells the harbor to a developer in thirty days, Marisol strikes a bargain with Elias Kerr. He is a soft-spoken smuggler who runs the night docks and holds the only surviving copy of the original manifest. His price is that she appraise, and quietly authenticate, a mysterious sunken vessel he refuses to name. As Marisol digs through salt-rotted records, she finds that Desmond isn't working alone: her own mother helped bury the truth. Elias, meanwhile, is hunting the same fire for reasons of his own, because his father was one of the eleven. Every clue that frees her family's name may condemn someone she loves, and the wreck Elias wants raised may hold proof that neither of them is who they believe. Trust becomes the most dangerous cargo in the harbor.