Shot in the head by an unknown assailant, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone finds herself trapped by locked-in syndrome: almost total paralysis but an alert, conscious mind. As she lies in her hospital bed, furiously trying to break out of her body's prison, all the members of her agency fan out to find the reason she was attacked. Meanwhile, Sharon becomes an incapacitated detective, evaluating the clues from her staff's separate investigations and discovering unsettling truths that could put her life in jeopardy again. But as the case draws to a shocking conclusion, her husband, Hy, threatens to return to his own violent past--and exact fatal vengeance on Sharon's would-be killer.