It's Tara Linley's birthday and the New Mexico attorney is spending it alone, until her best friend shows up. Donna Ecold has brought a bottle of champagne and a drop-dead gorgeous, much-younger lover, Bill Hamilton, to the party. The couple settles into the guesthouse for a good long stay, but Bill Hamilton wants more from Tara than hospitality. He needs a lawyer. Tara finds out too late that he is a madman and her representation is irrevocable. To protect her friend and save her own career, Tara must play a deadly game of cat and mouse. But as the Albuquerque winter turns icy, Tara Linley finds herself at the mercy of Bill Hamilton, her dangerously unstable client, a man who grows more psychotic by the day.