Losing a fellow officer in a shoot-out is enough to rattle Sigrid's cool, controlled demeanor. Discovering that her lover, famous artist Oscar Nauman, has also been killed devastates her. She withdraws from her colleagues, her police career, her life. But it is art she cannot escape: Oscar has left her his paintings worth millions, and galleries are clamoring to sell them. Just as the early Italian masters painted a wash of vermilion over green to produce the warm flesh tones of their Madonnas - only to have time fade the red to leave a deathlike tint behind - Sigrid begins to see through the vibrant surface of New York's art world to the interplay of revenge, greed, and power beneath. These are motives she recognizes from her police work as catalysts for murder. And when a shocking homicide occurs, it hits close to home for Sigrid, implicating Oscar's friends and fellow artists in the crime. Her desire to find the killer now puts Sigrid back on the job and out on the street. More than justice is at stake: whether she can still cut it on the force and whether she will ever again dare to love hangs in the balance. Fugitive Colors goes beyond the whodunit genre to combine a top-notch mystery with a portrait of a woman cop indelibly changed - able to notice the background details, the subtle shades, and the feelings that ultimately damn or save us all.