At the urging of an old friend, former cop and private investigator Noel Two Horses attends a monthly lunch meeting of retired police officers and deputies. While reuniting with some of his former Native American coworkers and friends, he finds out that one of their families has become the victim of kidnapping and extortion on the Mexican border with the United States just hours from Noel's bookstore. Noel offers to help his old friend and his family but soon discovers that all the available evidence indicates that this may have turned into another border murder. Noel begins an impossible search-and-locate investigation. Set in the American southwest where death on the border is as common today as tornado touchdowns in the Midwest, Noel sets an urban assault into motion to battle the extortionist and the odds.