She's been called headstrong. She's been called opinionated. Hell, she's been called everything in the book, and now, in this fourth mystery in the acclaimed series, the outlaw Jesse James rides again.

It's springtime in upstate New York, where the lilacs are in bloom and love is all around?even for Jessica James, full-time investigative reporter and part-time fool. Well, why shouldn't she be? Everyone else is in love: her mother, still honeymooning with the mischievous Charlie Browne; and her sometime lover, mobster Marcus Andrelli, who seems to have forgotten Jesse and taken up with another woman. For Jesse, though, love is literally in the air, with a handsome pilot named Mac Devlin.

The mystery starts simply, and in Jesse's never-dull world, that's a feat. A mysterious man is shadowing Mac, and the reporter instinct in Jesse takes over. What does this stranger want, and how does it involve her mother's elusive new husband, who disappears as quickly as he appears, always with Jesse's mom in tow? Mac and Jesse team up?reluctantly at first?to find the vanished newlyweds. Together, they are drawn into a perilous and deadly game of blackmail and secrets from the past, where the high-flying stakes mean life or death.