After being betrayed by her husband, former investigator for the Capital Defender's Office and mother-to-be Emma Price is forced to go back to work and must discover the reasons behind a teenage girl's murderous rampage with the help of a streetwise detective. Reprint.

Single motherhood hit Emma Price like a sledgehammer—a double whammy to go along with the considerable pressures of her job as an investigator with the Capital Defenders Office. Having to raise a toddler and a troubled teen and dig up mitigating evidence to possibly save an accused murderer from death row is already a considerable load. Add to that an eyebrow-raising affair with a New York City cop and a pressing need to solve the slaying of an old friend—a controversial political activist—and Emma's already full plate is seriously overflowing. But her dedication to justice is as strong as her commitment to family. And she's not about to let one killer run free while another unfairly pays the ultimate price—even if it means combing the darkest corners of her own past to uncover the truth.

It's a dark day when Emma Price, investigator for the New York Capital Crimes Division, wakes up in a hospital room after being savagely beaten on her way to meet Dawn Prescott, her boss and dear friend. And when Dawn is found murdered in a seedy motel room on Long Island, Emma's sure it connects with the recent assaultthough the police won't believe the killing was anything but a crime of jealous passion.Driven equally by devotion and guilt, Emma is determined to get answers, despite her concerned lover Detective Laurence Solomon's urgings that she quit. Working her way through a world of sinister and powerful men, Emma is in grave danger of being snared in the very web of duplicity, corruption, and death she's intent on exposing. But she can't back off nowbecause this one is personal.