Police academy-trained former reporter Ali Reynolds is contacted to investigate the grisly murder of a gold-digging divorcee on behalf of a woman accused of the crime. Lynn Martinson is dating the dead woman's ex-husband, and she and her boyfriend Chip Ralston have been charged. Ali is simultaneously drawn to the case of A.J. Sanders, a frightened teen with secrets of his own. He's the first to find the body in the Camp Verde desert when he goes to retrieve a mysterious buried box hidden by his absent father, a box that turns out to be filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in poker chips. When the body of an ex-con is discovered near the first crime scene, Ali struggles to determine if A.J. and Lynn's cases are related.