For more than two decades, Black women have disappeared across Chicago, their bodies turning up in abandoned buildings, alleys, and vacant lots. Police insist the murders are unrelated. Professor Elijah James Moriarty knows better.

Everything changes when Dr. Zora King is found strangled.

Authorities dismiss any connection to the city's alleged serial killer, ruling her death a mob execution. To them, a woman with Zora's reputation could never have become another victim.

Moriarty sees something everyone else has missed.

As the investigation pulls him into a pattern buried beneath years of ignored evidence, Moriarty finds himself forced into an uneasy alliance with Kosminski—a man whose philosophy of justice couldn't be further from his own. One hunts for truth. The other hunts for consequence.

If they're right, Chicago hasn't been hiding one killer.

It's been protecting one.