When a possible murder victim appears to have been carried-or walked-from the wreckage of a car lying at the bottom of a ravine on a country road, Hinky Doanes is called in by his protector at the National Counterterrorism Center to assist the FBI investigator in her investigation. Is it only a local crime of passion? Is it merely love gone bad? The victim has a history of promiscuous sexual practices and a list of casual sexual encounters longer than her free-spirit mother's, but FBI Special Agent Dell has managed to narrow the field of suspects to three locals-each of whom has had his or her longstanding and peculiar relationship with "Sweet Desmonda" Polk, now missing and feared dead. In exploring other suspects and motives for the victim's abduction or murder, Hinky discovers a connection that leads back to the extermination camps of Nazi Germany and the businesses that supplied them. As they follow the money from wartime Hamburg into the complex organizations of the present day, Hinky and Agent Dell begin to sense other, darker forces at work beside the forces of love, and as the bodies pile up locally, the domestic face of international terrorism becomes more and more apparent.