After a Houston Rodeo skybox party, full of kegs of beer and indiscreet behavior, LeeAnn Callahan falls twenty stories to her death. PI Giles Faulkner is hired by the victim's brother, Boots, to prove the police wrong-that LeeAnn's death wasn't suicide. "My baby sister no more kilt herself than a headless chicken " Eager to get to work, Giles gets sidetracked when she learns of her brother Robby's escape from a hospital mental ward. He's twenty-eight, diagnosed as bipolar-paranoid coupled with a condition known as the Midnight Disease. When off of his meds, he turns uncontrollably psychotic. Between frantic calls to goad the police into widening their search for Robby, Giles discovers that LeeAnn had a secret abortion only weeks before her death. More shocking by far is finding LeeAnn's missing cowboy hat underneath Robby's bed. Surely he couldn't be involved in her death? Desperate to prove her brother isn't a killer, and convinced that someone in the Houston Rodeo hierarchy was involved in LeeAnn's death, Giles continues digging. But before she can get at the truth, she is kidnapped, wounded, and left beside a remote lake crawling with hungry alligators. Someone wants her dead.