In reality, Maggie has turned whistleblower and is planning to tell her story on the sensationalist talk show In Your Face!, pointing to Mick to misdirect Rudy.

Rudy approaches a disfigured felon named Blondell Wayne Tatum ("Chemo"), who agrees to kill Mick in exchange for a discount on his dermabrasion treatments.

The next day, Detective Al Garcia and Marine Patrol Officer Luis Cordova inform Mick that he is the prime suspect in Chloe's murder.

Mick is visited by Christina, who had interviewed his old partner, Timmy Gavigan, and been told a detail from the Barletta case: Rudy's brother, George, is a tree trimmer.

After a shootout, he finds himself in the ocean and loses his hand to a Great Barracuda, opting to attach a portable weed whacker to the stump instead of a conventional prosthesis.

Returning to Miami, Mick delivers the video to Al before surviving another murder attempt, this time by a pair of corrupt detectives hired by a crooked county commissioner tied to Rudy.

Mick turns up the heat on Rudy by recruiting his brother-in-law, a personal injury lawyer named Kipper Garth, to sue him yet again for malpractice.

When a cameraman bursts into the operating room to start the interview, Rudy panics and accidentally stabs Reynaldo through the heart with a liposuction cannula.

With George dead and no option left but to flee the country, Rudy returns home to find that his girlfriend, actress Heather Chappell, has been kidnapped by Mick.