​Eleven-year-old Melinda reaches out to a Red Cross nurse for help in escaping a cult. Social Services takes her for evaluation to a health clinic run by John Rant. The clinic botches the evaluation; Melinda returns to the cult.
Fifteen years later, Melinda and John Randt again cross paths. But this time Melinda is not alone and she has a plan. With John’s death she can finally escape her cult-like life.
John at that time is overwhelmed by various crises and losses in his life. He is distracted and vulnerable. He must discover the true identity of Melinda, or someone will die.

​Mathematician Sinclair Dane and a small group of social media marketers offer a contest to win a billion dollars if anyone can pick all the winners in the annual NCAA basketball tournament. They know that 70 million people in the US try their hand at picking all the winners by filling out a bracket, in office pools, at their gym and other places.
If a decent fraction of these 70 million pay a $2 entry fee to enter the contest, they will have a very nice payday. The fact that they don’t have a billion dollars to pay a winner does not worry them. The odds against perfection are 9.2 quintillion to one.
But disaster looms. With three games to go, someone has a perfect bracket. Will Sinclair go to jail for fraud? There will be winners and losers.