Two men: one a gifted physician and scientist derailed by guilt; the other an anonymous stranger forced to flee prosecution for a violent crime not of his own doing. Two women: one an amoral beauty who wields her sensuality as a weapon; the other a teenager adrift and endangered in a foreign land. In the end, all are united by an act of atonement whose consequences may prove fatal. From the emergency room of a busy university hospital to the lonely vastness of the Sea of Cortez; from the honkytonk bars of Tucson to the desert coast of Mexico...this story of betrayal, friendship, love and death explores the toll which thoughtless passion may exact.