After surviving a push from a sixth-floor hotel room, detective Robbie Brownlaw uses his new talent for synesthesia, seeing colorful shapes tied to emotions when someone speaks, to investigate the death of a fellow San Diego cop.

Bradley Jones, a deputy in the L.A. sheriff's department who's been transporting drugs for a Mexican cartel since he was 17, turns to fellow deputy Hood for help after henchmen of a rival cartel kidnap Jones's pregnant wife, Erin. If Jones doesn't pay the rival cartel's leader, Benjamin Armenta, a million within 10 days as an apology for the trouble he's caused Armenta, Armenta will have Erin skinned alive.

Merci Rayborn, T. Jefferson Parker's stubborn, principled Orange County detective, is almost alone in believing that deputy Archie Wildcraft didn't kill his beautiful young wife and then turn his service weapon on himself. The evidence against Wildcraft—now hospitalized with a bullet lodged in his head—seems overwhelming. But Merci, who's still unpopular for exposing an old police scandal that caused the death of one cop and the ruination of others...