Damon Patterson and his friend Devon McCarthy plan on enjoying the U.S. Independence Day holiday with their families at Devon's luxury seacoast home near Bath, Maine. Damon agrees to drive with Devon and his children, and Damon's wife, Ellen, will join them later in the evening. They are soon driving through violent thunderstorms, which uproot trees, wash out the road on which they drive, and finally surround them in a sea of mud and boulders. Damon and Devon hike through the mudslide to arrive at Devon's house. They find Lisa missing with evidence for a bloody, titanic struggle in the master bedroom. This is only their first obstacle. Soon, investigators uncover two dead bodies, one of whom is a beautiful athletic Chinese woman, attractively dressed, but without identification. Within days, they are fighting for their lives. Damon and his colleagues at the MP detective agency try to determine the cause of Lisa's disappearance and the strange set of circumstances surrounding the Chinese woman's death that has been accompanied by an inexplicable wave of violence. Each chapter of Damon's investigation opens up new possibilities, as a homicide case soon grows into an international incident, involving the CIA, the Russian FSB, and the Vatican Bank, while Lisa's life hangs in the balance.