Anita 'Flak' Anders, the first woman sheriff of Nacogdoches County, is called to a fire in the wee hours of a hot July night in Deep East Texas. There she finds Curtis Lee Barnes, the husband who left her four years ago. He tells her the man trapped and dying in the burning building is the father-in-law he would never let her get to know. While Flak struggles with her old flame, and the new relationship just beginning to develop with the fire chief, she must also figure out which of the Barnes family might have killed the old man. And Curtis Lee is among the suspects. She better find out fast, as she finds her beloved mutt, Barney, dead on her doorstep. Soon, more bullets begin to fly, all apparently aimed at her head. While Flak dodges the escalating attempts on her life, the story of Tucker Barnes unfolds in alternating chapters. The chilling evil of a man who abuses his family in every way is described by the youngest daughter, Jenny, who exposes the raw pain of a child and an adult searching for some way, any way, she could have made it different. Against the backdrop of the religious fervor of the Pentecostal sects that proliferate in East Texas, Flak continues to pull the information she needs, piece by piece, out of a family that has banded together to shut out the outsider. Piercing their defenses and gaining their trust, she finally puts all the pieces together just before her house explodes before her eyes. Concussed in the explosion, she has to take shelter with the fire chief she is beginning to love, and remember the solution to the puzzle before someone else dies.