Win (windsor Horne Lockwood III, #1)

Windsor Horne Lockwood III, known as Win, is an enormously wealthy heir to the Lockwood family fortune and a trained fighter who dispenses justice outside the law. The novel opens with Win attending the NCAA basketball championship, where he surveys his target: Teddy "Big T" Lyons, a South State assistant coach. After the game, Win lures Big T to a warehouse and beats him severely for crimes Teddy committed against a hospitalized client of Fisher and Friedman, a victims' rights law firm Win funds.

Two FBI agents take Win to the Beresford, a prestigious apartment building on Central Park West, where an unidentified recluse has been murdered in a cluttered turret apartment. In the bedroom, Win recognizes The Girl at the Piano by Johannes Vermeer, a masterpiece stolen from the Lockwood Gallery at Haverford College over 20 years earlier along with a Picasso. The agents also reveal an alligator-leather suitcase bearing the Lockwood family crest and Win's monogram. He conceals his shock.

Win flies to Lockwood Manor, the family estate, and summons his cousin Patricia, who runs the Abeona Shelters, a charity for abused and homeless girls. Twenty-four years earlier, two masked men murdered Win's uncle Aldrich Lockwood, Patricia's father, and kidnapped the 18-year-old Patricia. She was held for five months in a storage shed the press dubbed the "Hut of Horrors," where she was repeatedly raped. DNA from the shed linked nine other young women, only six of whose bodies were found. Patricia eventually escaped, but her captors were never identified. She tells Win the suitcase is the one the masked men forced her to pack, linking the art heist to the Hut of Horrors.

PT, a shadowy, semi-retired FBI handler who recruited Win after college, reveals that the murdered man is Ry Strauss, the leader of the Jane Street Six, a group of 1970s college radicals who threw Molotov cocktails at a USO dance hall, accidentally causing a bus crash that killed seven people. During the ensuing manhunt, PT's partner, Special Agent Patrick O'Malley, was shot and killed by another member, Arlo Sugarman. PT asks Win to investigate outside official channels, and Win agrees.

Win interviews Lake Davies, the only previously captured member of the Six, now living under a false identity in West Virginia. Lake admits she lied about Strauss drowning and reveals that she and Strauss once stayed with Sugarman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When Win asks whether Strauss abducted young women, Lake goes pale, hints she feared someone besides Strauss, and asks Win to leave.

At Malachy's Pub on the Upper West Side, Win probes a barmaid named Kathleen, whose evasions betray knowledge of the fugitives. CCTV footage shows Strauss walking with a smaller, bald figure behind him on the murder day, likely at gunpoint. Win deduces that Strauss's Thursday outings coincide with the pub's closing time, follows Kathleen into Central Park, and learns she was Strauss's longtime lover. A recent bank robbery, in which thieves broke into safe deposit boxes, had panicked Strauss. A message from the bank drew him out of hiding, leading to his murder.

Jessica Culver, the ex-girlfriend of Win's best friend Myron Bolitar, helps analyze the case. She wrote about the Jane Street Six for the New Yorker and notes that one victim was the niece of mob boss Nero Staunch. Jessica also recalls finding Vanessa Hogan, the mother of another victim who publicly forgave the Six, deeply untrustworthy.

At Lockwood Manor, Win presses his evasive father about Uncle Aldrich but is rebuffed. Through his grandmother's records, Win discovers that Aldrich departed for Brazil just two days after the Jane Street Six attack and that Aldrich's wife Aline was likely only 14 or 15 when Aldrich brought her from Brazil. Win's father later confirms a pattern of predatory behavior with underage girls, covered up through payoffs and relocations. Win also learns his grandmother set up a shell company through Nigel Duncan, the family's longtime butler and attorney, to fund Strauss's life at the Beresford.

The consequences of Win's attack on Big T cascade when Teddy's brothers, Trey and Bobby Lyons, ambush Win in Central Park and throw him in a van. Concussed, Win slashes the driver's throat with a concealed razor blade, and the van crashes. During his hospital recovery, mob boss Leo Staunch, Nero's nephew, confesses that he and Nero once kidnapped and tortured Jane Street Six member Lionel Underwood to death. Haunted by the experience, Leo wants Sugarman captured legally. Win suspects the aging, wheelchair-bound Nero may have independently acted on the bank robbery information.

Win's biological daughter Ema, whose mother is movie star Angelica Wyatt, theorizes that the bank robbers found Strauss's identity documents and sold them to the Staunch family. Win confirms this by interrogating the captured robber. Win traces Sugarman to Missouri, where the Reverend Calvin Sinclair, Sugarman's partner, says Arlo died of lung cancer in 2011. Sinclair claims O'Malley fired first during the brownstone raid and that Arlo acted in self-defense.

When PT interrogates Patricia at Lockwood Manor, Ry Strauss is revealed to have had a Tisiphone abeona butterfly tattoo identical to the Abeona Shelters logo. That night, Patricia tells Win she remembers the tattoo: During the assaults, she would stare at the butterfly on her captor's forearm, imagining its wings beating so it could fly away.

The case cracks open when an art conservator finds film negatives hidden behind the Vermeer in a square format matching Uncle Aldrich's Rolleiflex camera. The negatives show horrifying images of Hut of Horrors victims. Win forces Professor Ian Cornwell at Haverford to confess that a young woman calling herself "Belinda Evans" seduced him to gain building access before the heist. Cornwell later saw "Belinda" on television, and Win realizes she was Patricia.

Win breaks into Patricia's home, finds the stolen Picasso, and confronts her. Patricia confesses to planning the heist with Strauss because Aldrich feared the negatives hidden behind the paintings would be discovered. After the robbery, she found photographs her father had taken of his victims. She confronted Aldrich, who attacked her; she took his gun and shot him dead. Patricia fabricated the entire kidnapping. She was never held in the Hut of Horrors; her grandmother helped plan the deception to protect the family. The real victims were Aldrich's.

Win returns to Vanessa Hogan, secretly recording her on a spare phone, and she confesses to murdering Billy Rowan, a member of the Jane Street Six, then enlisting Nero Staunch to capture and kill Billy's fiancée Edie Parker. Vanessa also killed Ry Strauss: After Nero passed her the bank robbery information, she lured Strauss out by phone and forced him back at gunpoint. The "small bald man" on the CCTV was Vanessa, bald from chemotherapy. She reveals that Billy and Edie confirmed they did not throw the Molotov cocktails. The substitute sixth member went by "Rich," which Win recognizes as Aldrich.

Win makes a series of morally complex final decisions. He discovers Arlo Sugarman is still alive but lies to PT and warns Arlo to run. He emails Vanessa's recorded confession to PT, believing she should face consequences for murdering Billy and Edie, who had not thrown the explosives. He tells Billy's and Edie's parents the truth about their children. Win reveals he shot Trey Lyons dead after catching him breaking into Ema's home. He chooses never to reveal Patricia's secrets, reasoning she killed a predator. In the final scene, Win thinks he sees a Tisiphone abeona butterfly tattoo between Ema's shoulder blades but chooses not to ask. Looking at his daughter's smile, he says that for perhaps the first time in his life, he sees only the white rather than the gray.