Carlton Westerfield, murderer-for-hire, has come home to Texas. After a years wandering around the Caribbean, he believes that Faustino Perez and Gregorio Molina, competing drug lords, have eliminated each other, making it safe for him to return to San Antonio.

While delaying his return by spending a few days in Galveston, two Drug Enforcement Agency types materialize at his hotel and inform him that his homecoming will not be going exactly as planned. Perez and Molina are alive and well, they tell him, and they want Carlton to work for them as an informant in order to put his old adversaries away for good. Carlton first laughs at their offer, but agrees to take on the task when the agents remind him that he might get to find out about his former lover-turned-enemy, the mysterious Paula Hendricks. It seems that she has become involved up to her pretty neck with the investigation and everyone surrounding it.

Curious to learn the truth about her, he takes the job, but soon learns that the truth about anything, especially Paula Hendricks, is more elusive than he dreamed possible.