Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming’s budding relationship with local photographer Fiona Kenshaw hits a rough patch after she is responsible for a heroic river rescue yet attempts to avoid the press. Despite her laudable actions, she begs Walt to help keep her photo out of the local paper. Confused by her protests, Walt thinks she’s just being modest about her heroism.

While Sun Valley is known as a billionaire’s playground, Walt’s job still keeps him grounded firmly in reality. One day he’s rubbing elbows with political royalty; the next he’s stepping over spilled jam jars while investigating the vandalism of a local home by a brown bear, and trying to find sitters for his twin daughters. He’s dodging Fiona, chasing down criminals, and attending charity fund-raisers, feeling like he’s leading a double life.

It’s at one charity benefit that a young woman he once rescued is convinced she has seen a ghost: her former captor, a man Walt watched die. Then Walt gets a phone call that changes everything: Lou Boldt, a legendary homicide sergeant out of Seattle, reports that a recent murder in his city may have a high-profile Sun Valley connection. Their shared search for information is soon complicated by the discovery of a body at the side of the valley’s busiest road, not far from where the spooked young woman lives. A young woman who happens to be under the watchful care of Fiona.

Walt and Boldt sense a connection — but are some cases better left in the cold-case file? Can Walt turn away from what seems an impossible truth? Can Boldt trick the suspect out into the open? Walt and Boldt begin to fit together the pieces of a terrifying puzzle — in the process putting themselves and everyone around them in harm’s way.