In this long-awaited new installment of the legendary Kate Delafield mystery series, Kate is forced to confront her most formidable opponent: herself.

Kate Delafield is in a world of trouble. Five months into mandated retirement from the LAPD, her long term on-again off-again relationship with Aimee Grant is off again. She’s become hopelessly dependent on the only substance that can drown her pain over Aimee—and the illness of her best friend. She is lost without her police career and beset by terrifying dreams.

Into this world walks Captain Carolina Walcott of the LAPD, with a request that Kate 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 to offer a lifeline back to the self Kate once was.

As she deals with a shocking and inexplicable homicide, Kate also pursues a trail of evidence toward Cameron that leads her into the high desert. Here she will find profound challenges to the truth of everything she ever believed in as a principled police officer. Here she must decide what it is she still believes: about her past, her present, her future.