The Mocking Program

In a futuristic world, Inspector Angel Cardenas investigates a murder in the Montezuma Strip, the Western hemisphere's largest concentration of industry and technology located in the Namerican Southwest. The victim is a well-off man with two clean IDs, making his true identity difficult to determine. Cardenas and his partner's investigation leads them to a woman and her daughter living as the victim's family, but a high-tech security system destroys the house before they can gather information. Using his intuitive abilities, Cardenas discovers the woman was fleeing from Katla's father, a felon with an extensive criminal record. Going rogue, Cardenas tracks them from the urban underworld of Quetzal to Costa Rica. The twelve-year-old Katla possesses something that makes her a target for her father and others willing to kill to obtain her.