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This novel follows Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite as she investigates the hit-and-run death of a twelve-year-old boy, a case that exposes a drug trafficking conspiracy reaching into the United States Navy.

D'Andre Miller, a twelve-year-old African American boy, is struck and killed by a car while jogging home from a pickup basketball game at the Rainier Beach Community Center. Tracy, her partner Kinsington Rowe (Kins), and fellow detectives Vic Fazzio (Faz) and Delmo Castigliano (Del) are called to the scene. Traffic Collision Investigator Joe Jensen notes that the body lies roughly twenty-five feet from the intersection with no skid marks, meaning the driver never tried to stop. Seattle police brass want homicide involved given the political sensitivity of a Black child's death during the Black Lives Matter era. When D'Andre's mother, Shaniqua Miller, arrives and collapses at the sight of the white sheet covering her son, Tracy kneels beside her, haunted by the loss of her own younger sister, Sarah, who was abducted and murdered years earlier.

A parallel storyline follows Del, who has recently returned to work after the heroin overdose death of his seventeen-year-old niece, Allie Marcello. Del meets Celia McDaniel, a prosecutor whose own son died of a heroin overdose. McDaniel explains that under a Washington statute, whoever supplied Allie's heroin can be charged with controlled substance homicide. She and Del clash over strategy: Del wants harsher sentences for dealers, while McDaniel advocates for safe injection sites and treatment alternatives.

Privately, Tracy faces her own struggle. At forty-three, she and her husband, criminal defense attorney Dan O'Leary, have been trying to conceive for six months. A fertility specialist delivers discouraging results, and Tracy begins taking Clomid, a fertility drug, without telling Dan, not wanting to burden him if she is the reason they cannot conceive.

Jensen identifies the hit-and-run vehicle as a black Subaru Outback registered to Laszlo Trejo, a Navy logistics specialist stationed at Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, across Puget Sound from Seattle. Trejo reported the car stolen the morning after the accident. When Tracy and Kins interview him, his demeanor seems rehearsed, and Tracy notices a cut on his forehead. The car's interior has been wiped with antiseptic to eliminate DNA, but a store receipt found in the backseat leads Tracy to convenience store security footage showing a man matching Trejo purchasing Red Bull thirty minutes before the accident. Tracy lures Trejo to Police Headquarters under the pretense of returning his car and confronts him with the video. He goes silent and requests a lawyer.

Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) defense attorney Lieutenant Leah Battles, a trained practitioner of Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense martial art, arrives to represent Trejo. The Navy takes jurisdiction and convenes an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding. Prosecutor Brian Cho charges Trejo with offenses ranging from negligent homicide to unpremeditated murder. Battles reviews the evidence and concludes Trejo should plead guilty, but he refuses, insisting the man on the video is not him.

Del, meanwhile, traces Allie's phone records to a user called "J-Man" who pressured Allie to reconnect after rehab in order to use her money to buy heroin. Del identifies J-Man as Jack Welch, an eighteen-year-old high school senior. After chasing Welch down on foot, Del extracts a confession: Welch was with Allie the night she died. Welch names his supplier as Nicholas Evans, a twenty-two-year-old band leader.

At the Article 32 hearing, when Cho prepares to present the convenience store videotape, it is missing. Cho states the last time he saw it was on Battles's desk the previous night. Preliminary Hearing Officer Sonya Rivas rules that without the tape, testimony about its contents would violate Trejo's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses. Tracy observes that Trejo shows no reaction, leading her to suspect he expected the tape to disappear. Battles faces an ethics investigation and is sidelined. Tracy meets Battles privately; both believe Trejo knew the tape would vanish. Tracy proposes surveillance to her superiors: SPD will issue a public statement suggesting it will prosecute Trejo, then watch him after his release from the brig, the military jail, hoping he contacts whoever helped him.

When Dan discovers Tracy is taking Clomid after her doctor calls their home, a tense argument follows. Tracy admits she feared being the reason they cannot conceive. They reconcile, though a subsequent pregnancy test returns negative.

Del and Faz arrest Evans. That same night, Welch and another person are found dead of heroin overdoses. Confronted with the deaths and the threat of consecutive homicide charges, Evans reveals that his supplier, Eric Tseng, told him Trejo was delivering over a pound of heroin when he struck D'Andre. Trejo was not simply a reckless driver but a drug courier.

Tracy conducts overnight surveillance on Trejo, who drives to a remote park. She hears a gunshot and finds him dead at a picnic table with a handgun near his left hand, though she recalls he was right-handed. Bremerton Police Sergeant John Owens, a former Navy logistics specialist, takes the lead on Trejo's death. A SWAT raid on Tseng's home finds him also shot dead, likely killed the same night. Someone is systematically eliminating witnesses.

At home, Dan reviews the security disc from the Defense Service Office (DSO) building at Naval Base Kitsap and notices a door across from Battles's office shifting position during the janitor's absence, though no one appears on the footage. The crime lab confirms the recording was digitally edited. Tracy presses the janitor, who admits he routinely props the building's exterior door open during cigarette breaks, meaning anyone who knew his routine could slip inside undetected. Tracy and Owens obtain the original, unedited security video, which shows a figure in Navy uniform entering during the break and hiding in an office until the janitor moves elsewhere. Tracy freezes a frame and identifies the figure by gold stud earrings: Captain Rebecca Stanley, Battles's officer in charge.

Tracy and Owens rush to find Battles, who has left the base with Stanley. At Stanley's apartment, Battles has already deduced Stanley's involvement and drawn her weapon. Stanley confesses: She became addicted to heroin after a back injury in Afghanistan, lost custody of her daughter, and was drawn into a drug trafficking operation. She stole the tape to protect Trejo and the heroin pipeline. Tracy and Owens arrive, and Tracy orders both women to drop their guns. They comply, but Owens presses his gun to Tracy's temple.

Owens is the mastermind. He exploited his knowledge of naval shipping to smuggle heroin through Trejo and coerced Stanley into stealing the tape. He needs Stanley to shoot Tracy with her .38, since his own weapon is a different caliber and would not fit his planned cover story. Tracy turns this logic against Stanley, arguing Owens will kill her next to eliminate the last witness. Stanley hesitates. Owens shoots Stanley dead. Tracy drops to the floor, but before she can fire, Battles disarms Owens using Krav Maga and pins him at gunpoint. He is arrested.

In the resolution, Tracy visits Shaniqua Miller to deliver the news that those responsible will be tried. Miller invites her inside for coffee. McDaniel prepares charges against Owens for multiple murders and drug trafficking. The ethics investigation against Battles ends due to insufficient evidence, though the decision does not declare her innocent. After the truth about Stanley and Owens emerges, Battles requests to finish her commission at Kitsap and privately decides to join Dan's law firm afterward. Del, now in a relationship with Celia, brings her to dinner at his sister Maggie's house. Maggie has begun to recover, cooking for her twin sons and seeing a therapist. In the final scene, Tracy wakes at 2:00 a.m. feeling nauseated, takes her last remaining pregnancy test, and sees two parallel lines: a positive result. She looks toward the bedroom where Dan sleeps, ready to share the news.