A vicious convict named Will Stirman breaks out of a Texas prison with a crew of dangerous men and a single goal: revenge against the people who ended his criminal career trafficking in human beings. One of those people was the late husband of Erainya Manos, the boss of San Antonio private investigator Tres Navarre; the other is Sam Barrera, a former federal agent now struggling to keep working as a P.I. while his memory fails him. As Stirman closes in, Tres senses that the case is more complicated than anyone will admit, but the people who know the full story are unwilling or unable to tell it. Left to piece the truth together himself, he wades into a history of greed, vigilante justice, and old crimes where the boundary between guilt and innocence grows dangerously thin. Stirman and his gang leave a trail of brutality behind them as the threads converge on the San Antonio neighborhood known as Southtown. The fifth Tres Navarre novel deepens the series' recurring cast, especially Erainya, and trades some of the academic-detective playfulness for a darker, more menacing tone driven by a relentless antagonist and the long shadows of past misconduct.