A call in the dead of night summons Father Michael Jerome to a suburban Chicago hospital-a police officer has been shot. As department chaplain, Michael arrives to find that the officer will survive.The same cannot be said for his assailant, who lays mortally wounded on a gurney, begging for absolution for some past sin. Offering last rites to the dying man, Michael hears his final confession and is shaken by the admission of a crime committed five years earlier.A murder that shattered his family.Struggling with the constraints of his faith, Michael moves cautiously as he tries to identify others involved in the vicious killing. But every secret he uncovers leads him further down a path where it becomes clear that someone is desperate for the past to stay buried.
