Where Sergeant Merci Rayborn is concerned, opinion within the sheriff's department is sharply divided. To some she's a hero for exposing the biggest scandal in the department's history and bringing down the former sheriff. Others cannot forget that, in making her case, she was prepared to implicate her own father and arrest her lover, both well-respected police officers. Just as the hostility is beginning to die down, a young deputy named Archie Wildcraft is found shot in the head outside his home, next to the gun that has just been used to kill his wife. The evidence points to murder-suicide, and Wildcraft, his memory impaired by the bullet lodged in his brain, can offer nothing to contradict this. But with the arrest of one innocent deputy still plaguing her conscience, Merci is determined to defy the district attorney and pursue the unlikely scenario that Deputy Wildcraft has been framed. Wildcraft, in the meantime, is pursuing his own agenda...