Older and wiser, P.I. Frank Johnson, in his fifth outing, has moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs where he's lived with his fianc Dreema Atkins. Times are lean. No new P.I. cases have rolled Frank's way since his return from Ankara, Turkey. His old boss, the flamboyant and wealthy attorney Robert Gatlin is marrying Frank's last client, Lois Mercedes, and Frank has his reasons for giving Lois a wide berth. Finally, a missing person case comes up when Zani Huang hires Frank to search for her husband Bao. Frank begins his investigation, but things get sticky when he discovers Zani's landlord, Kasper Peres, with a fatal slug in his chest. Then Zani vanishes and with her Frank's alibi when the police decide to charge him for Peres' murder. So, Frank takes it on the lam with his old bounty hunter pal Gerald Peyton to get some answers real fast. They run up against more dead bodies, and a ruthless gang of bank robbers desperate to find a hidden cache of money. Catastrophic changes rock Frank's world before he can reach any sort of a resolution.