With blood on his hands, Lucas Chrichton turns on his immediate comrades in search of the source of the leak, as the continuing revelations shake the foundations of the United Nations war crimes trials in The Hague.

As the UN War Crimes Tribunal scrambles for political cover, Lucas heads down country - into a mire of betrayal and deceit that marks the lives of his one-time comrades, whose lives are forever tangled in their past.

War crimes prosecutor Sophie Morgan pursues Lucas Chrichton into the heavy bush of the South Island's West Coast, in search of the man whose confessions may provide the clue to the truth of a ten year old atrocity.

The hunter becomes the hunted as Sophie closes in on Lucas the killer - but truth comes from an unlikely source as Lucas plunges further south on the trail of a ravaged mystery woman.

The final revelations of the horrors of the Bosnian atrocity are played out in the mountainous back country of Central Otago as Lucas and Sophie finally come to terms with the truth of his past.