Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son . . .

Once Matt Stromsoe was best friends with brilliant, unpredictable Mike Tavarez. That was before Stromsoe joined the San Diego P.D. and Mike left Harvard to run La Eme, the brutal Mexican Mafia; before a vengeance-obsessed Tavarez blew away everything Stromsoe loved, leaving him physically and emotionally broken.

Years later, Mike Tavarez is in prison for life, controlling his vast criminal empire from within a maximum security facility. Matt Stromsoe has rebounded from rock bottom to become a private investigator—and he's starting to feel something for Frankie Hatfield, the beautiful local TV weather forecaster he's been hired to protect from a stalker. But powerful, dangerous people are becoming too interested in Frankie's remarkable experiments with rain. And bars alone won't keep Tavarez from his ultimate goal: to make Matt Stromsoe suffer the unendurable torment of losing everything . . . again.