Description

They didn't steal the gold. They stole the price.

Mara was the best in the world at one thing. She could read the truth on a human face. Then they built a machine that couldn't be lied to, and the man she once loved put her out of work by calling her finest hour a human error.

Now the Shanghai gold fix runs through the Arbiter, an automated exchange sold to the world as incorruptible. No kill switch. No human to bribe. No way to reach in and undo what it decides. The one number everyone has agreed to trust without ever checking it again.

Which is exactly why a hacker named Wren comes looking for the only woman alive who can sit in a room full of the smartest people on earth and give away nothing. The crew Wren assembles doesn't want the bullion in the vault. They want the thing no one has ever managed to steal: the price itself. Feed the incorruptible machine a single lie it was built to believe, and for a few minutes the most trusted number in the world will tell a beautiful, profitable lie, then settle it forever, before anyone thinks to look.

It's the perfect theft. It runs on trusting the people she can least afford to trust. Across the city, the man who built the machine is starting to remember what it feels like to read a face. And to be read.

Ocean's Eleven meets The Big Short, set inside the high-stakes world of gold. A heist thriller about the most dangerous truth in any market: a price is only a belief, and belief can be picked like a lock.

A complete, standalone novel of approximately 70,000 words.