Any deep, committed relationship can be a springboard for your liberation or a prison that traps you. The power to make it one or the other always lies within you." That's the fifth rule of Ten. Tenzing Norbu and his fiancee, Julie, eagerly await the arrival of Ten's best friends, Yeshe and Lobsang, his boyhood chums who have since become the Head Abbots at Ten's former monastic home in India. Ten has helped Yeshe and Lobsang organize a fund-raising event sponsored by the Los Angeles Buddhist temple where Tenzing first taught years ago--before shedding his robes to pursue a career as a cop. The fund-raiser's big attraction is the unveiling of a sacred sand-painted mandala that the monks have constructed in the center of the temple. At the premiere, however, a group of hooligans commit an outrageous act that catapults the story into action. To complicate matters, one of the novice lamas--a brilliant protege of Lobsang's--goes missing at the event's culmination. Soon a series of strange crimes besets the city. Each crime is unique--some physical, some cyber--but all are mysteriously interconnected. Ten's attempts to crack the case pull him into a dark mirror-world of his sacred Tibetan Buddhist tradition; soon he's engaged in a life-and-death battle with a powerful shadow presence. He joins forces with Yeshe; Lobsang; his ex-partner Bill; and his hack-tivist buddy, Mike, to track down the Patient Zero of this epidemic of criminal chaos. Finally, he must face the truth: the source of the evil, and the solution, are a lot closer to home than he ever imagined.