Thirty-one-year-old Natalie Price has a tough job. A superintendent in the Massachusetts prison system, she rules over inmates' lives just before they get released. She's had to fight hard to be taken seriously in this harsh world, a world that is mostly male - on both sides of the bars. But she believes in what she's doing, and she's good at it.

Now, however, she gets the biggest challenge of her six-year career when a good friend, a college professor who was teaching one of Natalie's charges, is brutally murdered. Natalie had gone out on a limb to give this inmate, a convicted rapist named Dean Walsh, this opportunity, and it looks like Dean certainly made the most of it: He's the prime suspect. But he's not the only one, and Natalie's job - maybe even her life - rides on the investigation.