Hawthorne County is exactly the kind of place Warren Knox has been looking for.
Quiet roads. Empty industrial buildings. A small sheriff's department. And close enough to major transport routes to make an insignificant corner of North Carolina extremely valuable.
Knox has been sent to build a new chapter of the Iron Saints motorcycle club, but his orders are clear: don't conquer Hawthorne-become part of it.
The Saints buy property, employ local workers, open businesses and put money back into a community that badly needs it. Knox understands that fear attracts attention. Respectability provides cover.
But behind the legitimate businesses, another network is taking shape.
Sheriff Franklin Holt and his investigators aren't prepared to treat a leather patch as evidence of a crime. Yet as apparently unrelated incidents begin forming a pattern, veteran former NYPD officer Patrick Brennan and investigator Lena Park start looking beyond individual suspects towards something much larger.
Meanwhile, inside the Iron Saints, Knox faces another threat: men who believe restraint is weakness and violence is the simplest answer.
In Hawthorne County, criminals and cops are learning the same lesson.
The most dangerous organisations aren't always the ones hiding in the shadows.
Sometimes they're the ones everyone has grown accustomed to seeing.