Paz Hernandez, beautiful and passionate, a physician's assistant and leader in the Latino community of southeastern Colorado, wants to know why two of her doctor friends from her missionary days in Central America were killed and why a third is now fleeing his country and begging her for help. But she never gets to ask him. Even as she prepares to hide him at her isolated canyon-country ranch, they are both gunned down in the ranch yard by an unknown assailant. The obvious suspect is Paz's husband, Matt Ewan, a local Anglo known for his drinking and violent, secretive past. But Ewan has the perfect alibi: he claims he was changing a flat tire for the daughter-in-law of the most powerful man in the region, a federal judge whose younger brother is very obviously running for president of the United States. So who is this Dr. Jillian Cannon who Ewan says can vouch for him, and why hasn't she turned up? What does she have to hide-or to hide from? In the end, everyone swept into the maelstrom of Paz Hernandez's passion for justice must decide where their loyalties lie and whether the soul of a man running for president is worth more or less than the life of an ordinary man.