Guilty. A tough word to get your tongue around. A bitter mouthful-hard to chew, harder to swallow. I choked on it the first time I heard it used in the same sentence as my name. And time, the one thing I had plenty of, didn't help. It never does in prison.

Ben Hemmings is Atlanta's most sought-after builder of high-class stables for the moneyed elite, a reputation he has built during a decade in Georgia's exclusive horse world. But with the crack of a judge's gavel his universe unravels; Ben is torn from his precious family and sent to federal prison for a crime he didn't commit. Facing ten long years, he grabs the one rope he is thrown-hoping against the odds he won't hang himself-and cuts a deal with the unscrupulous FBI agent who sent him to prison in the first place.

Augustus "Ham" Hamilton, a horse breeder with old money and political clout to match, has been robbed. Not of cash or jewelry...those he could replace. He is missing a collection of priceless semen samples from the world's greatest show horses, stolen from a high-tech lab where they are stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. Hamilton wants it back bad enough to offer five million dollars, no questions asked. The FBI thinks Ben's friendship with Rollie Shore, a mob boss with whom Ben is serving time, will give them the inside track to finding the frozen samples, and they're willing to spring Ben from prison to do so. But Rollie, whose icy charm hides a molten temper, has his own plans for the reward...and is vicious enough to force Ben to grab it for him.

With the FBI squeezing from one side and a ruthless criminal threatening on the other, Ben turns to the two people he must trust: his wife, Dana, who once worked in the lab where the samples were stored, and his cellmate, "Black," a reformed drug dealer from the streets of Atlanta's south side. together they must run a terrifying steeplechase of brutality and betrayal, looking for a way to outwit both sides of the law.