When a paintball player gets hit with a real bullet, Dave Brandstetter catches the case.

Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has spent the last few years drifting in and out of retirement. For the sake of his boyfriend, Cecil, he has attempted to forgo dangerous jobs. But when a close friend’s death sends Dave into a depressive funk, Cecil recognizes that work is the only cure.

During a high-stakes paintball game, a hardcore supremacist gets hit by a very real bullet. Although the police claim the death was accidental—nothing but a stray round from a nearby hunting preserve—Dave knows that a man this hated seldom dies by chance. His investigation takes him into the strange world of make-believe war—a grown-up version of cowboys and Indians whose players sometimes have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. If Dave isn’t careful, he’ll find himself stained with something more permanent than paint.