Dutiful citizen and school principal Kerrin Horton is serving four years as mayor of the small California desert town of Freedom. Professional thief Gary Sullivan is doing twenty-five years-to-life on a burglary charge in Chino State Prison. But when the FBI needs an expert in security systems to prevent a bombing in Freedom, they temporarily extract Gary from prison and set him undercover in Kerrin's threatened town.

As the only one to know Gary's true identity, Kerrin determines to keep her constituents safe from the black hearted criminal. Meanwhile Gary, intent only on earning his promised sentence reduction, tries to steer clear of Mayor Goody-Two-Shoes. But when Gary gets roped into teaching summer school to the town's troubled teens, Kerrin finds the felon acts more like a mother hen than a monster. Gary, once so tough, is dismayed by Kerrin's growing respect, and soon discovers there's more danger in one innocent woman than in all the prisons to which he's ever been sent.