In the late 1980s, a successful businessman and his wife are murdered, their house torched. Their teenage daughter is left emotionally scarred, having lost not only her parents, but also her boyfriend -- who is believed to have been involved in her parents' death. Ten years later, near a small Pennsylvania town, a reclusive old man dies, leaving a note that names his young doctor the executor of his estate. Dr. David Arthurs hardly knew his seemingly kind patient, but now finds himself compelled by events to carry out the duties imposed upon him by the old man's will, and in the process, prevent decades-old blood debt from being revisited upon the old man's granddaughter. Afraid for his life but unable to refuse, Arthurs leaves his thriving practice and troubled love life behind and joins a local sheriff's deputy to unravel a mystery spanning oceans and generations. A mystery that has its roots in one of the great crimes of the century. As Arthurs searches for the truth, he becomes a target, along with the young woman he is trying to protect, a woman he is drawn to in some unfathomable way. Only through the indomitable will and carefully formulated program of the enigmatic old man can the two of them survive. Adapting himself to the old man's dictates, Arthurs finds, at the core of the mystery, a shocking revelation pointing to the most human motivation of all....