The Edge (the 6:20 Man, #2)

The novel opens aboard a train from Geneva to Milan, where Travis Devine, a former U.S. Army Ranger now working covert missions for the Office of Special Projects under Homeland Security, identifies three passengers as potential assassins. When two gunmen fire through a bathroom door expecting to kill him, Devine, hidden in a storage closet, kills both in hand-to-hand combat. A third operative, a woman, attacks with a knife; he knocks her unconscious but spares her life, a decision he questions.

Back in Virginia, Devine's boss, Emerson Campbell, a retired Army two-star general and fellow former Ranger, assigns him a new case. Jennifer "Jenny" Silkwell, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations officer and eldest daughter of former U.S. Senator Curtis Silkwell of Maine, has been murdered in her hometown of Putnam. Campbell, Jenny's godfather, reveals the senator has advanced Alzheimer's and is near death. Jenny's CIA-issued laptop and personal phone are missing, raising national security concerns, and a polymer shell casing for a .300 Norma Magnum round, a military sniper cartridge still in testing, was found at the crime scene. Campbell gives Devine a Homeland Security special investigator credential with orders to find the killer, determine whether classified information was compromised, and recover the devices.

Before heading to Maine, Devine meets Jenny's mother, Clare Robards, at her Washington, DC, mansion. Clare explains that Jenny called before her trip to say she had "unfinished business" in Putnam but did not elaborate. She describes her three children: Jenny, the high-achieving eldest; Dak Silkwell, an entrepreneurial tattoo artist with an Other Than Honorable discharge from the Army; and Alex Silkwell, a talented but reclusive artist who teaches part-time at the local school.

Devine arrives in Putnam, a windswept coastal hamlet of fewer than 250 people. Chief Richard Wayne Harper and Sergeant Wendy Fuss, the town's entire police force, resent federal involvement. At the local funeral home, Dr. Françoise Guillaume, the medical examiner who also works at the family business with her brother Fred Bing, reports that Jenny died from a gunshot to the forehead with an entry angle of 93 degrees.

At the crime scene on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic, Devine identifies a critical inconsistency. The polymer casing was discovered 321 yards away, suggesting a prone sniper shot, but a shot from that distance and position would produce a much shallower entry angle than the near-perpendicular 93 degrees recorded. Devine concludes that Jenny was shot at close range by someone standing before her, that her body was moved to the rocks below, and that the casing was planted to disguise the killing as a professional hit connected to her CIA work.

Suspicions focus on Earl Palmer, the retired lobsterman who reportedly found Jenny's body. Palmer, whose wife Bertie was recently killed in an unsolved hit-and-run, claims he looked down from the bluff and spotted the body at night. Devine discovers that failed neck surgeries left Palmer unable to tilt his head downward, making his account physically impossible. Palmer is later found dead, hanged in his late wife's art studio. Guillaume rules the death a suicide and quickly has the body cremated, eliminating any chance of toxicology testing.

Devine also learns that Alex was raped, beaten, and left for dead the summer before her junior year of high school, near the same location where Jenny's body was found. The attacker was never caught. Alex has dissociative amnesia and remembers nothing of the assault, which transformed her from an outgoing teenager into a recluse who rarely leaves Jocelyn Point, the Silkwell family estate. Jenny visited Alex shortly before her death to ask whether she had remembered anything, confirming that her "unfinished business" was investigating her sister's assault.

Dangers multiply as Devine digs deeper. Someone fires through his cottage window, and professional operatives connected to a Geneva organization he previously disrupted abduct him, but he breaks free and kills them. Campbell traces the leak to his administrative assistant, Dawn Schuman, who has vanished.

Connections between cases emerge. The rape kit from Alex's assault is missing from evidence, with the log showing Chief Harper last accessed it a decade earlier. Annie Palmer, Earl's granddaughter and a local café owner who grew up with Alex, tells Devine that her parents found Alex after the attack and died three days later in a house fire ruled accidental. Using satellite imagery that Jenny obtained through her CIA clearance, Devine identifies a vehicle fleeing the scene of Alex's assault, its door panel bearing a shape that matches the eagle-and-arrow emblem on Putnam police cruisers.

A breakthrough arrives when Alex has a dissociative episode, screaming at an unseen attacker. Annie witnesses a similar episode and hears Alex cry out that she thought her attacker was her friend. Devine realizes that Bertie Palmer likely witnessed such an episode and recognized the attacker, which is why Bertie was killed.

The investigation turns to the Bing family. Benjamin Bing, the former Putnam police chief, has not been seen at his Florida home in weeks. Campbell discovers that Benjamin completed Army sniper school and was separated from the military after stalking a young woman. Yet the satellite image does not implicate Benjamin directly: The Palmers would not have been surprised to see the chief driving a cruiser. Someone else was behind the wheel.

Guillaume invites Devine to dinner at the Bing mansion, ostensibly to share information but actually to gauge what he knows. Devine inadvertently reveals that Alex's attacker was someone she knew. While he is at dinner, Alex is abducted from Jocelyn Point. Devine finds Guillaume strangled near the estate and discovers a hidden room in the Bing mansion's basement containing a hospital bed, restraints, and intravenous equipment. The funeral home's van bears blood and hair on its damaged front end, linking it to Bertie Palmer's hit-and-run.

At the crematorium, Devine finds Benjamin mortally wounded, shot by his nephew Fred. Benjamin provides a recorded confession. Fred raped Alex 15 years earlier while joyriding in a police cruiser. Benjamin served as the family's enforcer, killing the Palmers when they attempted blackmail, stealing the rape kit, and killing Jenny when Fred learned she was investigating the assault. He shot Jenny at close range and dropped her body off the bluff, while Fred planted the polymer casing to frame his uncle if needed. Earl Palmer was coerced into claiming he found the body because the Bings possessed a recording of Earl confessing to causing a friend's fatal boat wreck. Guillaume joined the cover-up for a payout from the family trust. After Guillaume and Fred tried to eliminate Benjamin, he killed her, then takes his own life.

In the crematorium's inner chamber, Fred has Alex tied on a conveyor belt, preparing to cremate her alive. He confesses his obsession, insisting he loved her, and reveals he shot Dak to prevent the sale of Jocelyn Point, which would have meant Alex leaving Putnam. Alex, who has secretly cut her restraints with a knife Devine gave her, stabs Fred and severs an artery. When Fred raises a wrench to kill her, Devine shoots him dead.

Authorities confirm the case is resolved. Jenny's missing devices ended up in the ocean, and no classified information was compromised. Alex tells Devine she plans to sell Jocelyn Point, visit her parents, and travel to Italy to see the masterworks she has studied only in books. Devine agrees to join her. As he arrives back in Washington, he finds a note slipped into his pocket, signed by "The Girl on the Train," the woman he spared in the opening chapter, promising their next encounter will be their last.