It's not often Alex St. James has a story like this fall into her lap, only to have it snatched away again. As news researcher at Midwest Focus Television in Chicago, she'd been set to interview a young Polish immigrant woman, pregnant by a Catholic priest. When the woman is found murdered, and Alex tries to investigate, her boss abruptly reassigns her to a fluff piece, so he can give the hot murder story to the station owner's nephew. But anyone who knows Alex also knows that like Fate, she'll find a way. Acting without authority and without assistance, she continues to investigate, making some very powerful people in the Chicago Archdiocese uneasy. Suddenly Alex finds herself in the middle of a plot so sinister and far reaching that the very next thing she might hear are her own Last Rites. Award-winning mystery author Julie Hyzy has also written several award-winning science-fiction short stories. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

Determined to untangle the web of duplicity spun by those around her, Alex is soon poised to expose the truth. That is, until she finds herself alone with the killer, a formidable foe with a deadly interest in her future.

PI Ron Shade is looking for Bob Bayless, a dead-&-buried executive who was spotted playing blackjack in vegas, while news reporter Alex St James fights of the attentions of a creepy mortician who's a little too eager to show her his moves.