When Detective Maya Thorne is summoned back to Warragulla—the rural Australian hometown she swore never to revisit—she expects a routine investigation. Skeletal remains have been discovered in a drought-exposed creek bed at Billabong Station, likely from the bushfires that ravaged the region three years ago.

But as the parched earth gives up its secrets, Maya finds herself excavating more than just bones. The remains belong to Cameron Lockhart, a local landowner who disappeared during the fires—and someone put a bullet in his head before burying him where the flames would erase the evidence.

Partnered with Senior Constable Luke Carver, whose calm exterior masks dogged determination, Maya methodically unravels a more complex case with each revelation. Water contamination data is hidden with the body—corporate shell companies. Government officials receive mysterious payments. And at the centre of it, all is a systematic environmental crime targeting vulnerable properties across multiple states.

The investigation forces Maya to confront the very reason she fled Warragulla fifteen years ago—her public humiliation after discovering similar contamination as a teenager, dismissed as “hysteria” by officials, including her father. Now that father is in a care facility, his dementia occasionally parting to reveal crucial pieces of the puzzle.