Aud Torvingen returns--against her better instincts--scarred, heartbroken, changed, but tougher and rougher than ever.

Aud Torvingen has never worried about violence. To her it is simply a tool, one of many, to be used, as appropriate, with dispassion, speed, and precision. In Always, she takes on a new challenge: teaching a group of ordinary Atlanta women self-defense skills.

It doesn't matter how well trained you are, how big, how fast, how strong; there will always be someone out there bigger or faster or stronger. Always. That's what Aud tells her students--but she never imagined the consequences of imparting that lesson, which shake her to the core.

To regroup, she travels to Seattle to meet her Norwegian diplomat mother and her mother's new husband. She's also there to handle what looks to be a run-of-the-mill fraud at one of her investment properties, currently being used as a movie set. Big money is in play, and it seems someone is sabotaging the production.

In intertwined Seattle and Atlanta narratives--seductive, and breathtakingly taut--Aud engages with the limits of self-reliance and faces the appalling--and appealing--prospect of allowing herself to need other people.