It’s presidential primary season in Washington, DC, and both parties are on edge. At campaign rallies for all the candidates around the country, there are disturbing incidents of violence and protest and shocking acts of civil disobedience. When Wendy Upton, the highly respected centrist senator, receives an anonymous threat that could destroy her promising career, she hires Peter Rena to investigate her past and figure out which side is threatening her and what they are threatening her with. As Rena digs through the senator’s seemingly squeaky-clean past, he must walk the tightrope between two parties at war with each other and with themselves, an electorate that is as restive as it has ever been, and a political culture that is as much driven by money as it is by ideology.

Billionaire entrepreneur David Traynor has big dreams for fixing a broken government in his first term as president of the United States. Everyone in the capital is scrambling to adapt to the new disruptor in chief’s bold agenda, though many also want to see him fail. Unsure of whom he can trust, Traynor intends to turn to an unusual group of people to advise him, including the savvy and sometimes ruthless DC fixers Peter Rena and Randi Brooks. Though he is at the height of his career, Rena finds his world in chaos. When malicious, untraceable cyberattacks related to his past start seeping from the dark corners of the internet, his doubts overwhelm him. Then an unpredictable tragedy throws the country into crisis, and he must come out of his stupor.

When a shadowy American diplomatic complex is attacked in North Africa, the White House is besieged by accusations of incompetence and wild conspiracy theories. Eager to learn the truth, the president and his staff turn to Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks. The investigators dive headfirst into the furtive world of foreign intelligence and national security, hoping to do it quietly. That becomes impossible, though, when it blows up into an all-out public scandal: Congress opens hearings, and a tireless national security reporter publishes a bombshell exposé. Now, Rena and Brooks are caught in the middle.

Peter Rena is a “fixer.” He and his partner, Randi Brooks, earn their living making the problems of the powerful disappear. They get their biggest job yet when the White House hires them to vet the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Judge Roland Madison is a legal giant, but he’s a political maverick, with views that might make the already tricky confirmation process even more difficult. Rena and his team go full-bore to cover every inch of the judge’s past, while the competing factions of Washington, D.C. mobilize with frightening intensity. All of that becomes background when a string of seemingly random killings overlaps with Rena’s investigation, with Judge Madison a possible target.