After a friend and fellow lawyer is killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, attorney Paul Madriani takes on another client, who, he suspects, is involved in double murder. Madriani wants to know who killed his friend and why. He is torn by questions of conflict between his duty to a client who may be a killer and the need to know the truth. Madriani wonders whether he himself had been marked for death, only to have a friend die in his place. Madriani is drawn into a vortex of crime that spans the Americas. Without realizing, he is suddenly riding the crest of a dangerous wave involving a family of wealthy international developers and people who murder for money. When the police focus on the wrong motive for the killings, thereby threatening to close the book on another unsolved crime, Madriani sets off on a deadly quest that takes him from California to the steaming jungles of Mexico and the ancient cultures of the Yucatán. There he discovers that while death may be driven by distant and exotic motives, the killer, like a serpent, lies much closer at hand.