Still working on securing the partnership with Grace Milligan for her fuel refinery while in Fairzie, Trader and Marsh cross paths with a scouting party that has followed stories about a fuel source. That’s only the tip of the spear. That scouting party has been sent by Ironhand Jackson, the boss of El Dorado. In El Dorado, Ant, a woman who works as an enforcer for Hoyt Lynch, the self-made lord of Boardwalk, arrives to kill Jackson. Lynch has learned of the fuel refinery’s existence and desperately needs it because his own fuel reserves are running out.

Though takes Trader and Marsh time to figure out all the players in the violent game for resources, Trader isn’t going to back off from making the deal he wants. Before he knows it, Marsh has negotiated them into a rescue job, something Trader hates to get involved with because he’d rather deal in goods, that will take them to Boardwalk—and straight into Lynch’s guns and the LAV-25 Lynch has used to build his empire. Trader is even more angry when he learns that Marsh wants to go to Boardwalk for reasons of his own, and Trader considers those reasons to be wasteful and in his way.

With enemies on all sides, Trader and Marsh and their crew have to navigate a narrow path to rescue the man they’re sent after from Lynch in Boardwalk. But Ant is a player too, and she has her own secrets that will cost them dearly.

In Trader’s world, profit runs on blood and fuel, and he will do whatever it takes to seal the deal.