Sean Dwyer is a small-time insurance lawyer who relies on electronic surveillance to win cases until a brilliant bit of lawyering brings him to the attention of Martin Rousch, chief of enforcement for the San Francisco branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Seeing promise in Sean despite his questionable credentials, Rousch invites him to join the Commission in its fight against financial wrongdoing—the same agency that targeted Sean’s father in an insider-trading investigation five years earlier. Although his father committed suicide, Sean’s belief in his innocence has never wavered, and he accepts the job with plans to find proof within the agency’s files that will exonerate him.

After his clandestine efforts to look into his father’s case are discovered, Sean fears he will be fired. Instead, he is given a new assignment: discover which of the lawyers in the agency is insider trading in the stock of target companies. “Anyone can cross the line,” Rousch often reminds his staff, something Sean begins to realize as his investigation proceeds and the pursuit heats up. Unsure whom to trust, his life in danger, Sean must overcome old demons if he is to save himself.