With her young son’s potentially fatal neuroblastoma in complete remission, New York City medical examiner Laurie Montgomery returns to work at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where she’s been employed for more than two decades. Worried about whether she still has what it takes after so much time away, Laurie finds her first case back to be a dangerous puzzler of the highest order, involving organized crime and two start-up biotech companies caught in a zero-sum game. Against the advice of her colleagues and her husband, fellow medical examiner Jack Stapleton, Laurie is determined to solve the mystery the case comes to represent. Satoshi Machita, a former Kyoto University researcher, is set to own a valuable patent controlling pluripotent stem cells destined to spark a trillion-dollar industry of regenerative medicine. When he dies on a crowded New York subway platform, Laurie must decide whether his death was natural — or something fiendish. Behind the scenes, there are people who would like to see Laurie as far away from the investigation as possible. Despite threats against her, Laurie presses on, until they extend to the person she loves most in the world: her son, JJ. Suddenly Laurie must face solving the crime — and saving her son’s life.