Lauren Heller and her husband Roger, a brilliant executive at a major corporation, are attacked in a Georgetown parking lot after an evening out. Knocked unconscious by the assailants, Lauren lies in a coma in the hospital while her husband has vanished without a trace. With nowhere else to turn, Lauren's teenage son Gabe reaches out to his uncle, Nick Heller, a high-powered investigator with a corporate intelligence firm in Washington, D.C. Having returned to town on the next available flight, Nick finds Lauren conscious, the police skeptical and his older brother Roger still missing. Nick and Roger have been on the outs since the arrest, trial and conviction of their father, the notorious "fugitive financier," Victor Heller. Whereas Roger chose to follow in their father's footsteps and join the corporate world, Nick instead rebelled. He enlisted in the Special Forces and later he served in a highly secretive intelligence unit in the Pentagon. Now working for one of the most respected firms of corporate "fixers," Nick's looking into his brother's disappearance unexpectedly pits him against the interests of some extremely influential forces in Washington, including his own boss. With few allies and many enemies, Nick is forced to seek help where he can-- including from his own despised father, still in prison in upstate New York. Nick finds himself on a collision course with one of the most powerful and secretive corporations in the world, whose minions will stop at nothing to protect the secrets that Nick Heller is determined to uncover-- secrets that reach into the highest levels of the government... and may get Nick and everyone he's trying to protect killed.