"Kate," Detective Joe Cameron said, "there was always the possibility--"

"--that like most threats they were just threats," Kate finished for him. She knew better. Had known from the start this was as real as death.

Death is now on her doorstep. Not even her loyal LAPD colleagues can protect her from an attack that may come from anywhere, anytime.

Four years retired, Kate Delafield has a twenty-year-old case roaring back on her, a case from which she had recoiled, withdrawn herself. A homophobic homicide far too reminiscent of a recent, haunting, life-changing investigation of the murder of a young lesbian at the Nightwood Bar. Now she suffers in secret, knowing she is personally culpable for the mishandling of evidence.

She has also begun to understand how the roads she has traveled have led her to this day. The key decisions about the conduct of her life and her police career that have brought her directly to this time, this place in the high desert where she has taken herself. All she can do now, she resolves, is protect as best she can the people she loves most, especially Aimee, from this threat. And, until her time runs out, she can go back and investigate, determine who actually ended the life of fifteen-year-old April Shuster.

But events, people, intervene. New people in her present life, some from her past. And they will take her in the most unexpected of directions.