When a kidnapping of a wealthy playboy occurs, Private Investigator Joseph Riley must unravel the tentacles of truth to discover what is hidden at the core of his client's darkest vow. In 1943 San Diego, as the rest of the city keeps watch on the war in the Pacific, Joseph Riley recounts a year old case that proved to be anything but ordinary. It was a normal day in October of 1942, as normal as any other day would be, when a new client walks into Joseph Riley's office. Alexis Santorum, recently married, is a woman whose many shades of beauty provides a façade to the many shades of her predicament and personality. At the root of her problem is an abducted husband, William Santorum, a known panderer and playboy, and a past that she can't seem to outrun. She employs Riley to help her find out who is at the center of the kidnap and ransom but taking on the case thrusts Riley into a world of conspiratorial angles. With every clue the angle shifts, the questions mount, and the truths become murkier until the unimaginable becomes imaginable. As Riley vows to see the case through to the end his suspicions that Alexis has hidden the truth beneath the folds of her public facade mount and he finds that he must untangle the web of lies and deceptions to find out just how innocent his client is.