FBI special agent Gwen Harrison is resting in an unidentified rehab facility after being shot by two assassins. Immobilized, she suggests that the Bureau permit Special Agent Karen Wilken to join her in seeking the perpetrators. Karen (a UCLA-trained engineer) appeared in the Tom Deaton novel, THE LAST VOICE YOU HEAR. Together with the Bureau Director, General Walt Gradison and a tech master, Michael Liu, Gwen and Karen will investigate the attempted murder. The investigation will take them into the world of the Mexican drug cartels, the world of an international criminal who has funded the party in power and into the highest reaches of the American government. The central question of the novel concerns the degree to which a person can swim in the waters of moral ambiguity, conducting lethal clandestine operations while sustaining his or her personal moral principles.