David Colton has a good life going for himself when he accepts a birthday dinner invitation from his parents. He goes to it even though nothing like that has ever happened to him in all of his thirty-three years. They feed him a streak dinner - another thing they never did - and then give him a birthday present of ten thousand dollars. They tell him to "further his ambitions". In the end, he goes home trying to figure out what they wanted from him because it was that weird. He wakes the next morning to someone knocking on his front door. It's two police officers and they are there to tell him that his parents are dead, the victim of a shooting in a local liquor store. In essence, that starts everything. He learns that four people were killed in that liquor store. Stunned, shocked and grieving, he goes to his parent's home later that day and finds two things of interest. One, is a note inside a folder that his mother left on her computer keyboard. One of the items on the note tells him not to talk to anyone named Rhiannon. It isn't hard to agree only because he doesn't know anyone by that name - only the Fleetwood Mac song. The second is a phone number written on a card in one of the drawers of his mother's desk. When he calls the number, an anonymous voice tells him to, "Stay out of this or you will end up like them." When he hangs up and calls it back, he finds that the number has been disconnected. Curious about the place where the crime occurred, he visits the clerk who came on duty in that store at seven o'clock that morning. Her name was Yadira and she feigned such fear of what had happened there that she told David that she had told the store manager that she was going to quit her job at the end of her shift that day. Not able to learn anything from her, he meets a police detective, Lawrence Peters, outside the store. Basically, all he gets is a lecture to stay out of the case. With nothing learned at the site, he calls the firm his mother told him to call about any money they had. It is the place where the mysterious Rhiannon works. He sets up an appointment that he attends the next day. Rhiannon works there and, apparently, her job is to be a distraction. However, his mind is on his parents, so he ignores the woman completely as the financial planner tells him that he is quite rich. He leaves satisfied that his money is safe, Rhiannon notwithstanding. Another step in his journey happens when he returns to his job - he is the manager of a bookstore - and calls the owner from his desk. He explains to the man what has happened and asks for a few days off. He's fighting tears as he speaks and is clearly upset. The issue is that a female employee named Tempest Summers is pushing a cartful of books passed his office and hears the conversation. This starts a chain reaction where Tempest and her mother, a woman named Marcene, try to unlock his parent's computers only to discover that neither one has a password on it. In the middle of all this, two other things happen. One, Rhiannon is fired from her job and she blames Doug for that fact. The second is that he learns the name of the third person killed at the liquor store. He is a doctor, Doctor Leonard Kaiser and his partner, Doctor Katherine Seeger tells him that Doctor Kaiser learned that his parents aren't genetically related to him. Further study tells him that his embryo was transplanted into his "mother" and that is why he is not generically related to them. It was a new procedure at the time, but to him, to Doug Colton, that does not excuse his "parents" of telling him about his past and who his real parents were. That brings up the name of the fourth person killed in the liquor store - a man named Harold Reames. He works the night shift in the store. Also, as it turns out, the killer was his brother, a man named John Reames.