The shame of terrible deeds past can drive a man to self contempt. So it is with Mick Calahan, anonymous, disconsolate, shielding the world from himself in priest's robes. But a disturbing assignment and the desperate trust of a young woman threaten to make him choose between staying buried and unleashing the phantoms that haunt his past. Drawn into Gabriella's taut, troubled paradise, Mick harbors a dark secret--that his signature quality is not virtue. And the woman knows, and the town will come to see, that their deliverance could compel this mysterious man to oppose evil by becoming it.