Retired Detective Kevin Beldon has left Ottawa and gone into retreat at a Buddhist monastery in California following his successful treatment for lung cancer. He's trying to make sense of his life, but death is very much on his mind. And not just his own; he's still trying to come to terms with the loss ten years earlier of his wife and son, victims of an evil mastermind whom Beldon had been forced to let escape. Beldon is happy to be retired, but when Global Patrol, the international police force, comes looking for his help on a serial killer investigation that has them stymied, he's drawn back in.