A troubled Mary Ann Walker takes a nosedive off a bridge. Seattle's police department macho man John LaMoia takes the call, along with the beauteous cop psychologist Daphne Matthews. They suspect her boyfriend, known to beat Mary Ann. Her seething brother, Ferrell, is convinced the boyfriend did the deed. But the case somehow becomes too slippery to close.

Lou Boldt, the supervising officer, is entangled in a conundrum of his own: two women have disappeared and a road crew worker's death may have a connection to the missing women. A peeper who's photographing undressed women at tourist hotels becomes Boldt's best suspect, along with a man who is stalking and terrifying Daphne.

As both cases heat up, so does the sexual tension between Matthews and LaMoia leading them both into unknown emotional territory. A hair-raising chase through Seattle's Underground, a little-known network of hundred-year-old streets that were paved over by the city decades ago, brings the story to its white-knuckle climax.