Desmond Aloysius Limerick is a man with a shadowy past. Raziah Swann calls him with an urgent request for help. Jaleh, her sister, has been attacked and seriously injured and hospitalised, just one day after her apartment was ransacked. She's a business journalist who was working on a profile of an auditor who was himself mugged and killed. Fearing there's more to come, she asks Dez to Portland. Her fears are right - and the sisters are both attacked in the hospital by a trio of hired thugs, a trio who weren't expecting to face Desmond Limerick. The two captured men (and one corpse) have now attracted the attention the U.S. Marshall's, the D.E.A., as well as the Portland police, with the only thin thread that connects them leading straight back to Clockjack, a massive corporation with ties and resources that dwarf most nations. And only Dez stands in the way of whatever comes next.