Merry Folger is more than ready for a romantic vacation with her fiancé Peter when fate--and her police chief father--intervenes. Twenty-one-year-old Jay Santorski never should have drowned in the frigid waters off the Nantucket shore. What was the athlete, Harvard scholar, and part-time scalloper doing out alone in the storm- churned bay?

At her father's insistence--and over Peter's objections--Merry returns to the island to investigate, only to be confronted at every turn by false leads and dead ends. And Police Chief John Folger is behind too many of these roadblocks. For the first time, Merry begins to feel she cannot trust her lifelong role model--her own father....