A badly chewed-up corpse high in the Flat Tops Wilderness leaves Colorado hunting guide Allison Coil mystified and wary. Obvious signs suggest the dead man is the victim of a mountain lion attack but Allison’s wilderness-savvy bones scream otherwise. A few miles away and a few thousand feet lower in downtown Glenwood Springs, a controversial candidate for U.S. Senate is shot during a campaign stop as newspaper reporter Duncan Bloom dodges the long-range gunfire. Coil and Bloom follow leads to the city’s overlooked communities—encountering both the powerful and those who keep their heads down—and follow traces to the for-profit prison industry. Coil is joined by neighbor Trudy Heath, a popular businesswoman whose use of immigrant workers is attracting attention. Coil’s tracking skills and Bloom’s dogged investigative experience attack a shadowy organization from opposite ends. The snare tightens as the pair trade explosive details around who is benefiting from a for-profit prison. Determined to protect the Flat Tops Wilderness from criminal mayhem, Coil knows she must take every means necessary to uncover the conspiracy even as she realizes she is tangling with an organization engaged in a cruel sport that sets a new, dark low for depravity.