In the first Cole Sage book, we find Cole at the low point of his career. Now, he's returned to the paper where he started his career, The Chicago Sentinel. Instead of writing the big stories, he's doing the work of a rookie reporter. His "big story of the day" is a cat caught in a tree. During its rescue, the cat's owner takes her Good Samaritan neighbor hostage. Cole witnesses something so disturbing it reawakens the journalist's desire to write again.

Returning to the paper, Cole finds a desperate message asking for help from Ellie, one that got away. The one that has continually haunted his life. Cole drops everything and flies to California. He must find what would make her so desperate, she would call him after so many years. Cole finds her terminally ill, and abandoned by her husband. He discovers while Ellie was heavily medicated, she mistakenly signed a power of attorney. Now her estranged daughter Erin's inheritance won't go to her, but her abusive step-father. Cole vows to find the girl and right the situation.

The path to keeping his word is blocked at every turn by the husband who abandoned her, his shady real estate deals, violent con men, street thugs, and the lure of a fortune in diamonds that unite them. The anger, sorrow, and crippling guilt of 20 years fires Cole's drive to keep a promise, that in the end, will heal and return the soul to the great journalist.

Beaten, bloody but determined, Cole Sage conquers greed and hatred with a strength that only love, and a will as hard as diamond, can achieve.