Bloodied clothing and an unexplained injury. A night lost to an alcohol-fueled blackout. The discovery of a grisly murder. A powerful politician's son awakens to find his hand injured, his girlfriend missing, and his memory a blank.
When Dylan Quinn, a young naval aviator and the son of the U.S. Senate majority leader, awakens with a hangover to find his hand injured, his clothes bloodied, and his memory of the previous evening all but wiped out by an alcohol-related blackout, he turns to Honolulu private investigator T. J. O'Sullivan for help.
Quinn tells T. J. all he can recall are fragmentary memories of a heated argument with his girlfriend. And he's learned she failed to return home the night before. Because of the unidentified blood found on his clothes, an unexplained injury, and his missing girlfriend, Quinn fears the evening they spent together may have ended violently. While T. J. helps her client reconstruct the past 24-hours of his life, the Honolulu police discover the body of Quinn's girlfriend, dead of multiple stab wounds, floating in the Honolulu marina.
After the police arrest her client for murder, unconvinced he's guilty, T. J. opts to run her own parallel investigation of the murder. The investigation, though, puts her at odds with the head of the HPD criminal investigation division. What she uncovers is a complicated tale that's been decades in the making, a story full of twists, turns, and explosive revelations. T. J. races against time to find the truth behind the killing before her client goes on trial for murder, producing a scandal that could bring down the most powerful man in the senate. She must contend with secretive enemies lurking in the shadows, waiting for their moment to step forward and strike. The knives are out, and O'Sullivan must dodge them all to get to the truth about who killed her client's girlfriend and why.
Did Quinn stab his girlfriend to death during an argument? Or is he the victim of a conspiracy as cunning as it is complex? And how does it all connect to his father, the most powerful politician in the U.S. Senate?