When Detective Senior Constable Sarah Chen finds prominent Aboriginal rights lawyer David Namatjira dead at the bottom of Emily Gap, what appears to be a hiking accident quickly reveals itself as calculated murder.

David's death coincides with the systematic ransacking of his Legal Aid office, where crucial files documenting mining company corruption have been stolen. His legal challenges cost Northern Territory Minerals millions while protecting sacred Aboriginal sites from illegal exploration, giving corporate executives powerful motives for eliminating their most effective opponent.

But as Sarah digs deeper into Alice Springs' web of corruption, she discovers David's murder was orchestrated by an international criminal network that eliminates anyone threatening their environmental crime operations. The conspiracy reaches from boardrooms to government offices, with tentacles extending across multiple continents where similar murders have silenced environmental advocates and indigenous rights lawyers.

When David's five-year-old daughter Emma disappears, Sarah realises the killers are systematically eliminating witnesses and family members to protect their billion-dollar operations. Racing across the red heart of Australia from Alice Springs to remote Hermannsburg, Sarah must navigate cultural complexities and corporate conspiracies while protecting an innocent child from professional killers.

With federal agencies closing in and international operatives hunting Emma, Sarah faces her most challenging case in a landscape where ancient Aboriginal law meets contemporary environmental crime.

Some secrets are worth killing for. Some places are worth dying to protect.