After Walter "Pop" Dix, the director of the orphanage where Shane Scully grew up, dies of an apparent self-inflicted shotgun wound, Shane and five other former orphanage residents are named as pallbearers, but the six of them don't think it was suicide.

Leaving L. A. 's Parker Center, Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, agree to meet at home in one hour. Shane gets there; Alexa doesn't. In the middle of the night, he's called to a crime scene on Mulholland Drive: The African-American victim, who appears to be a Crip gangbanger, has been executed gangland style. Shockingly, the body is in Alexa's car and her gun is found nearby. But Alexa is missing. Shane's frantic investigation into his wife's disappearance...

Charged with felony misconduct in a high-profile solicitation of murder case, Lieutenant Scully is forced to resign from the LAPD and to seek employment with the corrupt police department in a small suburb of Los Angeles. There he becomes ensnared in political blackmail, and his only hope of clearing his name and coming out alive lies with his estranged wife, Alexa, the LAPD chief of detectives.