Detective Senior Constable Riley Murphy thought Lightning Ridge was career exile—a remote opal mining town where the biggest crimes were petty theft and neighborly disputes.

Then respected opal dealer Elena Kozlov is found brutally murdered in her ransacked workshop, and Riley’s routine investigation spirals into something far more dangerous.

Elena wasn’t killed for her valuable stones—she was eliminated for asking the wrong questions about suspicious corporate activity. As Riley digs deeper, she uncovers Asset Beta, a covert operative who’s been surveilling Lightning Ridge residents for years, documenting them for potential elimination.

With a USB drive full of damning evidence and federal backup racing against time, Riley must expose a corporate terrorism conspiracy that reaches into Parliament House itself. Twenty-three people across six target sites are marked for death—and Lightning Ridge is just the beginning.

Sometimes asking the right questions means risking everything. Sometimes it means saving everyone.