A fatal bomb blast propels Miami News police reporter Britt Montero into the story of her life, as deadly secrets and betrayals from the past sweep into Miami on the winds of a killer storm. More than one evil prowls the sweltering city. When Britt reports the story of a missing teenager, she uncovers a frightening pattern of identical cases.

As Britt probes the baffling case, an old mystery reopens personal wounds. Britt has always felt simpatico with the father she never knew - who was executed by a Castro firing squad when she was only three - and bewildered by her mother's bitter silence about the man who allowed the dream of a free Cuba to become a fatal obsession.

Now, as the Castro regime weakens and falters at last, as intrigue and politicking build to a fever pitch throughout Miami's exile community, Britt meets two men who knew her father well. Both know the shocking secret history of her parents' past. Through them, Britt learns that her father left an explosive prison diary naming the traitor who betrayed him.

Rumor says the long-sought diary has now arrived in Miami, in the possession of a rafter, a balsero, one of the thousands who risked their lives braving the sharkinfested waters of the Florida straits to reach freedom.

Suddenly everyone wants the diary, and everyone who acquires it is marked for murder. As the cold trail of the missing boys heats up and Britt seeks her father's diary in order to find the man responsible for his death, the most destructive hurricane in fifty years bears down on Miami. People flee the Keys, and storm panic spreads as Britt confronts her mother, demanding the long-kept secrets of the past.