This is a story of John Calloway and Anne Hubert - a lawyer and a social worker - drawn into a case involving a child in state custody who goes missing. The story begins with a failed attempt to blow up a police station. It follows John Calloway as he becomes involved with the leader of a militia group whose son has been taken into state custody; Anne Hubert, the social worker who is assigned to the child's case; and two police officers who descend into murder over an error involving the Miranda warnings that will end their careers if exposed, all of which culminates in McDonald County in Southwest Missouri where murder and a terrible storm come together on a river and John and Anne's fate ends up in the hands of the two desperate police officers.