Mason Hawke had success, fame, respect. Then war made him a murderer -- and left him scarred in the worst possible way. Haunted by a past as black as the depths of Perdition, Hawke's looking for a place to start over, to disappear. And Salcedo is just a stop along the trail. A small piece of Hell in Texas, it's a town once run by outlaws and now ruthlessly bullied by a mob that's twice as bad, though they call themselves "lawmen." And the top dog's a man who was once Hawke's childhood friend.

Mason Hawke wants no part of small frontier-town civil war. One's brewing here, and there'll be no way to stay neutral -- especially when conscience and a killer force his hand. But doing the right thing could expose the past Hawke's so desperate to hide -- and even dying might be a preferable fate ...