When a lone runner is found dead on Miami Beach's North Shore, Detective Sam Becket's first concern is for his adopted daughter, Cathy, a student at Trent University. Cathy is also a runner, and she's vulnerable. Sam fears for the stability of his close-knit family, and especially for his wife Grace, blissfully pregnant after repeated miscarriages. As Sam and his team start to investigate, a connection emerges with another homicide on Pompano Beach, and others are drawn into the web: a troubled young boy being treated by Grace for his drug problem and Kerry Flanagan, a charismatic runner to whom Cathy feels powerfully drawn.