Eight years ago, in Sun Valley—snowcapped playground for the wealthy and ambitious—all that stood between New York State attorney general Elizabeth Shaler and a knife-wielding killer was local patrolman Walt Fleming. Now Liz Shaler returns to Sun Valley as the crown jewel and keynote speaker for billionaire Patrick Cutter's world-famous C3, a media and communications conference where the richest, most powerful business tycoons converge. The attorney general, a political lightning rod, is expected to announce her candidacy for president. It's a media coup for Cutter—but a security nightmare for Walt Fleming, now the county sheriff.

As C3 gets under way, authorities learn of a confirmed threat on Shaler's life, and various competing interests—the Secret Service, the FBI, Cutter's own security forces—begin jockeying for jurisdiction. Beyond the logistical nightmare that the conference's opulent extravagances represent for Sheriff Fleming, he must also contend with a raft of other local concerns: his troubled nephew's arrest, his wife's infidelity, the death of a socialite under suspicious circumstances, and a series of apparent maulings by an aggressive cougar. Each of these incidents comes to a head just as Shaler's assassin puts his chillingly precise plan into action.