Attorney Barbara Holloway has taken on the sort of cases no one else wants - hopeless messes, all of them - and with the help of her father, Frank, she has pulled through each time. But even from the start, this new case is different. Mitch Arno always meant bad news for the coastal town of Folsum, Oregon. When they ran him out of town seventeen years ago, he left behind a wife with two daughters and a family that never wanted to see him again.

When he returns, he brings trouble in the form of a lot of suspicious money. As Barbara attempts to counsel Mitch's wife about the money, a second form of trouble arrives: a corpse, Mitch's. And now Barbara is in a morass of conflicting interests, and the only way out could lead her straight into the arms of the devil.