"...A policeman stuck his head in the door.

"Would you mind telling the captain I'm almost ready? I asked. "Give me three or four more minutes."

He nodded and disappeared down the front stairs. I tiptoed down the hall to the back stairs and out the back door. The flashing lights and neighbors in various states of hastily dressed attire were all in front, staring at my shattered porch and broken windows."

Dr. Greg McGregor, a geotechnical engineer from St. Paul, cannot possibly foresee how much his life will change nor how much it will be in danger, when he answers a call from his friend, Charley Farnsworth, chief engineer and major stock owner in TINMAN, an international heavy equipment construction company, asking Greg to meet him in L.A. immediately concerning a nine-digit secret he can’t discuss over the phone.

Greg is thrust into an unexpected suspense-riddled adventure when he survives a bombing of his house and later watches helplessly from a block away in Denver as his friend is murdered before his eyes. Together with the feisty former professional skier, Corky Gonzales, Charley’s Aspen condo house sitter and friend, they embark on an exciting and dangerous quest to find who is behind the killings and to discover the identity of Charley’s nine-digit secret.

Was Charley’s murder orchestrated by someone at TINMAN, or by the drug cartels using the huge heavy equipment returning from South American projects to transport drugs, or by the someone connected with the Environment Movement opposing the construction of the proposed billion-dollar Susitna hydroelectric dam? Or by someone else related to whatever multi-million dollar project Charley had discovered? And why are Greg and Corky targets of killers with far-reaching tentacles?