Two years on death row for a murder he didn't commit has stripped former JAG officer Marcus "Mack" Boone of everything but a single, fading memory: a flicker of sound on a distorted cassette tape. With his execution just weeks away, Mack's obsessive analysis of the jury deliberation tapes reveals an impossible truth—a thirteenth voice, a cold and impatient whisper that doesn't belong. This discovery is the key to unlocking a conspiracy so vast and so terrifying it makes his own wrongful conviction seem like a footnote.

Aided by his estranged sister Sarah and a washed-up private investigator, Rick Hogan, Mack's investigation from behind bars begins to unravel a meticulously planned operation. The real Juror #12, a quiet construction worker named David Tully, is missing. In his place sat Nolan Reeve, a ghost, a former special operator working for the untouchable private military contractor, Aegis Tactical. But as Mack gets closer to the truth, the conspiracy pushes back with lethal force. A prison riot is orchestrated as a cover for an assassination attempt, and a threatening phone call makes it clear that his family, especially his seven-year-old niece, is now in the crosshairs.

The fight for Mack's life explodes into a national firestorm, revealing that his conviction was nothing more than a cover story for the murder of an investigative journalist who was about to expose Aegis's darkest secret: a secret, illegal domestic surveillance and neutralization program known as Project Damocles. From a prison cell to the steps of the Supreme Court, Mack's personal battle for exoneration becomes a war for the soul of the nation, pitting him against a corporate army, a compromised justice system, and the specter of a government that has declared his innocence a threat to national security. In a race against time, Mack must not only clear his name but dismantle a deep-state apparatus that believes it is, and always will be, above the law.