Down-and-out-lawyer Rusty Ingraham left behind a murdered woman and a houseboat splattered with blood. All the evidence said Ingraham was in San Francisco Bay. Dead. But a friend of Ingraham's, former cop and prosecutor Dismas Hardy, isn't so sure. And Hardy has to find out, because a stone-cold killer, now paroled, once threatened kill Ingraham and Dismas Hardy both.

Now to save his own skin, Dismas must face down liars and killers on both sides of the law. From mob foot soldiers to brokenhearted lovers to renegade cops, a dozen lives are tied to the fate of Rusty Ingraham - and the payback has only just begun...