Days before her wedding, Rainy Dale jumps at a chance to visit the fabled Black Bluff bull sale down in California, but things go awry when she is assaulted and her truck is stolen.

In this twist on the "locked-room" form, more than one mystery is hidden on the ranch where Rainy and her dog, Charlie, end up. Everyone--the owners, ranch hands, angry neighbors, and perhaps even the deliveryman who brings coke coal for the ranch's old-fashioned forge--is harboring a damaging secret. When Rainy realizes that even her dog knows a grisly hidden truth, the stakes are raised as high as life and death.