As returning Detective Mike Logan joins the Major Case team, Detective Goren finds himself confronted again with Nicole Wallace -- his murderous nemesis -- when he and Detective Eames check out the drug-related slaying of a city health inspector. The key link is the victim's brother Evan, a recently widowed medical examiner who is romantically involved with the re-surfaced Wallace, and the investigators fear that the man's young daughter might be Wallace's next victim.

In a story ripped from the headlines, a prison warden Bill claims he was brutalized and forced to pay a $50,000 ransom for his long-kidnapped wife, but Detectives Goren and Eames are puzzled when they discover that the missing woman has been happily cohabitating with an escaped prisoner for 10 years. Amid a backwash of lingering secrets and lies, the investigators re-visit the warden's past and recall a famous axiom - follow the money.