After years of carefully working the edges, a blood-commitment forces burke's return to his former career: "violence-for-money." claw, once the shot-caller of a white supremacist prison gang is free . . . and terminally ill--he desperately needs a pile of cash to bet on a long-shot cure. he tells burke about a punk who once purchased protection from him, a man who claims to know the truth behind a "cold case, " the unsolved rape-murder of a thirteen-year-old girl. the killers are all weathly men today, ideal blackmail marks. but wealth is power, and the informant needs claw's protection again. burke decides to roll the dice. a win would give burke the two things he lives for: money and revenge. a loss would turn "terminal" from a diagnosis into a certainly, and not just for claw.