A sex scandal blackballed DC correspondent, Tate Donnelly, and forced him back to square one—working at a small, mid-western newspaper. His first substantive story is a bizarre killing of a local man, mimicking one from a nearby town. That murder has a suspect in custody, but could they have the wrong guy? Carrie Pruitt is trying to survive, barely keeping her grooming and kennel business afloat since the town bully is bad-mouthing her—a man who might have sexually assaulted her had the new guy in town not intervened. When the creep ends up dead, she becomes the prime suspect and is threatened by his family who's determined she pay in Biblical terms, an eye for an eye. Carrie turns to Tate for help in finding the truth, to exonerate her from these trumped-up charges. What the two uncover is nothing less than diabolical and leads them to dark money where you can buy anything, even DNA matches for the right price.