Brent Masterson, a high-powered attorney, finds himself in the middle of both a devastating earthquake and the needs of a single mother seeking his help to locate her nine month old daughter. The journey from the ruined church where they attended mass, and where it all began, to Shimie's apartment is fraught with danger every step of the way. The eight blocks to be traveled are met with crumbled houses, fires, fallen trees, torn up streets, exploding homes and sinkholes. The spring suns of Scottsdale did their best to drain them of their last ounce of energy.Crawling inside every room of her damaged apartment, Brent discovers the body of the sitter lying on the kitchen floor-but no signs of the daughter. Brent did his best to convince Shimie that a Good Samaritan had rescued her daughter, though he eventually believed otherwise. The ensuing trek to his reasonably intact home was equally long and had sucked out their last bit of energy.Working with a Scottsdale Detective friend, Brent spends the ensuing days attempting to piece together the child's disappearance in the middle of an earthquake. Was the sitter murdered, or was she in fact a victim of the quake? Where in all of this was the former husband she hadn't heard from in a while? Out of gratitude for what Brent was doing on her behalf, she sets in motion his seduction-not realizing she would eventually find herself falling in love with an openly committed bachelor.Frustrated by the slowness of events regarding her still missing daughter, she sneaks out of his house and makes her way across Phoenix to the seedier part of town; all in the belief that maybe her former husband knew where her daughter was. In her quest to find the baby's father, however, she finds herself awakening in a hospital bed. Brent, though tired of her stubborn ways, brings her home to recuperate while the search continues for the daughter. He's made it plain to Shimie that once the daughter is found, mother and daughter would eventually be evicted-there was no room in his professional life for permanent relationships.