Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone --- no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong. She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new --- much younger --- husband? The clock is ticking. Ariel is increasingly frustrated and desperate, running out of time, and the one person in the world who can help is the one person she least wants to ask.

American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school, makes her shopping rounds, and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café. Across the Seine, tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony, perplexed that his police escort just departed, and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make, not all of them technically legal. And on the nearby rue de Rivoli, Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van, and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum, in the epicenter of Western civilization. He sets down his metal briefcase and removes his windbreaker. That’s when people start to scream.

Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications --- and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.

Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications --- and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.

Literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript that contains explosive revelations about powerful people. Veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun. And the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life while always looking over his shoulder. Over the course of one long day, these lives collide as the book begins its dangerous march toward publication.

Kate Moore is a working mother struggling to make ends meet and maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life and to start anew. But then another American couple arrives, and Kate becomes terrified that her own past is catching up to her.