Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates the murder of San Francisco's most celebrated couple, Isa and Ethan Bailey, and reporter Cindy Thomas becomes attracted to the case and Lindsay's partner Rich Conklin, when the body of a preacher is found executed.

San Francisco detective Lindsay Boxer has only the cryptic message written in lipstick on a car windshield as evidence from the brutal shooting of a mother and her child as they were returning to their car in a mall parking garage, and things become complicated when an empty safe is discovered along with the body of an popular actor.

San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, the subject of a police brutality trial after a shoot out involving two teens, retreats to Half Moon Bay to get away from the media circus and becomes embroiled in the investigation of a series of murders that puts her in mind of an unsolved case from her