In this long-awaited new installment of the legendary Kate Delafield mystery series, Kate is forced to confront her most formidable opponent: herself. Five months into mandated retirement from LAPD, her long term on-again off-again relationship with Aimee Grant off again, hopelessly dependent on the only substance that can drown her pain over Aimee and the illness of her best friend, lost without her police career, beset by terrifying dreams, Kate Delafield is in a world of trouble. Into this world walks Captain Carolina Walcott of the LAPD, with a request that Kate quietly and secretly try to locate Kate's former police partner, Joe Cameron, who has vanished. She also offers Kate a business card--the name on it a woman from Kate's past who may be able offer a lifeline back to the self Kate once was. Even as she deals with a shocking and inexplicable homicide, Kate simultaneously pursues a trail of evidence toward Cameron that leads her into the high desert. Here in the high desert she will find challenges to the truth of everything she ever believed in as a principled police officer. Here in the high desert she must decide what it is she still believes: about her past, her present, her future.