His old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her. She creates a special troubleshooter job for him for cases that are too complicated or too politically touchy for others to handle. In addition, Lucas is married now and a new father, all of which is fine with him; he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. For every bit of peace you get, you have to pay — and he's waiting for the bill. It comes in the form of two people hanging from a tree in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes the situation particularly sensitive is that the bodies are that of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. "Lynching" is the word everybody's trying not to say — but, as Lucas begins to discover, the murders are nothing like what they appear. There's much worse coming.