The father he never knew. The fight he never wanted.

Ben Joel was a fatherless eleven-year-old boy when he found his mother dead of a heroin overdose in a rundown Kansas trailer home. Doing his best to shutter away her memory and his own violent past, Ben is now an attorney trying to make a life for himself and his family. While investigating a case for a client accused of murdering an ex-cop, a strung out flesh peddler named Ricky Butler tells Ben he's the spitting image of a guy Ben has never heard of named Paco Correa. Ben shrugs off the comment as the ramblings of a burnout until Butler references the death of Ben's mother twenty-eight years earlier in shockingly familiar terms, claiming she and Correa were murdered by dirty cops. Ben's search for the truth about the death of his mother and a father he never knew drags him back into the dark recesses of his past and puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless sex trafficking ring.

"Meting out intrigue and suspense at a gripping pace, the book develops its cast with deep backstories that ensure the audience's emotional involvement . . . it has cinematic moments and is thematically absorbing." —Foreword Clarion Reviews

"[Ruhl] loads his pages with sharp, rapid-fire dialogue . . . This tale delivers unexpected shocks, as well, even before the final act and gratifying denouement. A shrewd and energetic mystery series installment." —Kirkus Reviews