Phil Broker's latest adventure hits close to home, when he finds his estranged wife and daughter caught in a web of deception that may conceal a terrorist plot to bomb Minneapolis' nuclear power plant

When Phil Broker's estranged wife, Nina, and his daughter, Kit, disappeared months ago, he wasn't surprised. Nina has a mysterious and dangerous job working for the government, and her work has taken her in harm's way before. Broker sets out on a mission to find Nina and force her to choose between life as a soldier or a mother, and take Kit out of danger once and for all.

At the end of Vapor Trail, Broker learns that Kit has been abandoned by Nina at a motel in Langdon, North Dakota. But when he arrives, the situation is far more complicated than he imagined. Kit is, bizarrely, accompanied by a "babysitter" named Jane, who claims to be Nina's estranged girlfriend. Buddy Yelton, a local legend and hopeless womanizer, has apparently taken up with Nina. But Buddy Yelton is no harmless local - he has hidden connections to the Aryan Nation, and possibly Middle Eastern terrorists as well. And two motel guests are equally mysterious - Broker can't help thinking he remembers them as former GIs he knew back in Laos in ’72. Obviously, all is not as it appears - and more than Kit’s life is in danger - the fate of the entire Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area is in Broker's hands.