It’s two in the morning when Josie Bates’ ward, sixteen-year-old Hannah Sheraton, slips into Archer’s Hermosa Beach apartment to see if Josie sleeps in his bed. But Josie isn’t there. When her Jeep is found abandoned in a parking lot, the only clue to her whereabouts leads them to an expert witness for the prosecution in the case that made Josie’s reputation as a defense attorney ten years earlier.Racing against a clock ticking off the minutes of Josie's life, Archer follows a winding road from the Hollywood Hills to the glitzy evangelical enclave of Orange County; the seedy side of Los Angeles to the pristine and remote California mountains, What he finds is that the woman he loves was once a ruthless and hated defense attorney, that the system he believes in has released a double murderer, and that there is more than one person who would be happy if Josie Bates was never seen again.