Zach Smith

"People hire me, Zack Smith, to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. This time I have to track down a fourteen-year-old runaway, Jessica. Her trail leads to the streets of Portland, where pimps, drug dealers, and pornographers offer runaways an illusory security in exchange for their innocence - and sometimes their lives."

Zachariah Smith intends to find the person who shot him and Irene Sandhoff outside her office during a citizen's rally against Sandhoff. Was the bullet meant for Zach or Irene? Or, by luck, did the killer only have to use one bullet for two targets. Zach finds he must give the shooting his full attention when Phil Pauling, the chief of police for Mackie Woods, Oregon, is shot while in Zach's car, and an old friend is found dead in Zach's office.