Sandra Crain, the wife of a powerful business and civic leader in Tucson, is shot to death in a shopping mall parking lot. Police have few clues and no apparent motive. The case remains unsolved for months.

    Sandra's husband, Mo Crain, hires Brinker, a former Border Patrol agent turned private investigator. "If you find anybody who thinks she had an enemy in the world, you’re doing better than I have,” the police homicide detective tells Brinker.

    The Crain case takes Brinker from Tucson to the Mexican border towns of Nogales, where he seeks help from a drug dealer who owes him a favor. Another twist sends him to Vancouver, British Columbia, the source of Mo Crain's own alibi for the time of his wife's murder.

    While taking on a seemingly impossible case, Brinker faces two personal challenges. The woman he loves, reporter Dolores Gonzales, is about to leave for an exciting new job in New York. Meantime, a federal grand jury is investigating the shooting incident that drove him off the Border Patrol, and a bad agent named Henry Sanchez wants to be sure that Brinker doesn't testify.

    But what Brinker fears most is being forced to reveal a secret that would wound his best friends, Al and Anna Avila and their children.