"Twenty years ago, Alaska was a different place - rougher, more violent. Danny Shirtleff was the kind of cop needed to keep the lid on Anchorage - never afraid to mix it up. He'd spent months undercover taking down violent criminals and cheating death. His luck ran out on a muddy road next to Skeleton Lake. Three slugs in the chest took care of Danny, and landed fledgling detective Nik Kane with the first big case of his career. At the time, the crime scene yielded little in the way of clues, but for the young detective that obstacle didn't seem insurmountable. He never expected that it would require twenty years to untangle the threads that made up the dead police officer's life." "Two decades on, and Nik has been badly injured in the pursuit of his latest case. Something about this experience starts him thinking about the mystery of Danny Shirtleff - a mystery that has haunted him for years. Physically unable to work on a new case, Nik is determined to keep himself occupied by reexamining the evidence in this cold case. But cold cases can heat up. Nik's about to get burned."