Officer Ray Weiss is a cop’s son, a cop’s grandson. All he’s ever wanted is to follow in their footsteps. But when he finds out what the senior officers in Chicago’s District 20 have in store for him and the other rookies as "initiation" into their brotherhood, he has to make a choice.

Ray’s senior partner, Jack Fiore, asks him to break into a jewelry store and steal a few pieces. It’s just a little fun---especially because they’re set up to be the first cops on-scene to "discover" the crime. No one gets hurt, and everybody’s happy: Fiore gets the jewelry, Ray gets to be one of the boys, and the store owner gets his insurance money. Ray doesn’t want to do it, but Fiore leaves him no alternative. . . .

It all goes wrong when Ray breaks into the store and finds a corpse instead of his promised reward. Coincidence, or was that part of the setup, payback for being a reluctant rookie? And it doesn’t end there, because Detective Sloane Pearson is on the case, and if Ray doesn’t help her look for the killer, she might discover him.