Ex-cop Kim Kovak is stunned. Peter is back - the former fiancé who abandoned her years ago during her painful recovery from a career-ending injury. Why is he here? What is he after? Garrett Quaid, Kim s part-time investigative partner and now close friend, is wondering the same thing. And then the cases start cropping up. On a photo shoot at a horse show featuring the Black Horsemen of Ohio, Kim observes what might be a racially motivated attack against a young protégé of the group s sponsor, legendary African American horse trainer Bill Scott. When odd things begin to happen at Scott s own stables, Kim is asked to investigate, but immediately finds herself surrounded by stonewalls. Mouths are closed, everyone is hiding things, and nothing is what it seems. Meanwhile, Quaid is being wooed by a new insurance company, and agrees to take on an assignment to test the waters. His mission is to look into a suspiciously high number of claims generated by a series of very sudden horse deaths at an Indiana racetrack. As he begins seining for information, clues are scarce and suspects illusive. Could this number of deaths be accidental? Coincidental? Or are they deliberate? Weave in a tangle of deceptions, obsessions and schemes, and the mystery business gets extra risky, especially when Kovak and Quaid start pulling on threads.