Content Warning: This section of the guide contains extensive discussion of death by suicide and mass murder, which feature in the source text.

Jason and Rob are EMTs and are called to a Mass Casualty Incident at City Center where a man named Brady Hartsfield has just run a gray Mercedes into a crowd at a job fair. In the midst of all the horror and chaos, they find a woman badly injured but alive. Her name is Martine Stover, and for the rest of her life, she will be paralyzed from the waist down.

It is now six years after the Mercedes Massacre, and Bill Hodges runs his private detective firm, Finders Keepers. Bill is in the waiting room of a doctor’s office when he receives a text message from Pete Huntley, who was his old partner when he was still a police detective, or “Knight of the Badge and Gun” (21), as he used to think of himself. Pete asks Hodges to call him as soon as possible. Pete is nearing retirement, which is described here as “End of Watch” (17). Hodges himself retired a few years ago but has not been able to bring himself to fully give up his identity as a police detective.