The Science of Lies

athena 1 story

Summary

Valerie Rhodes survives on two things: triple-shot iced coffees and data that doesn't talk back. At 23, she's the sharpest forensic analyst in Detroit's elite crime lab. To Val, humans are messy and deceitful, but physical evidence? It never lies. Until late December, 2025. Trapped in a subterranean concrete bunker during a brutal Michigan blizzard, Val is handed a high-profile holiday murder case. But when she dusts the pristine crime scene, the infallible police database flashes a terrifying match-implicating a member of her own team. With the precinct running on a holiday skeleton crew, the department begins tearing itself apart from the inside. No one is safe from suspicion, and the evidence points everywhere. Locked in a claustrophobic basement to solve the case off the record, Val is forced into a high-stakes partnership with Julian Hayes, an intense homicide detective whose sharp intuition clashes with her clinical logic. Together, they must hunt a ghost who knows their every move, their every protocol, and their every secret. But in a game where the science itself has been weaponized, the hardest part isn't finding the clues. It's surviving the consequences.