D.A. Butch Karp won't rest until he gets no lesser plea than "guilty of murder" out of Mandeville Louis, a vicious assassin accused of killing two innocent people in cold blood. Karp knows his insanity plea was as calculated as his crime. And he's getting away with both.

Now, lying in wait in a psychiatric ward, Louis is about to slip through the system again. But this time, he's reaching out for something intimately close to Karp: beautiful Marlene Ciampi. As a killer's spree explodes in a nightmare of violence, she will become the unwitting pawn in two men's deadly battle of minds... and murder.