Sara Collins, second wife of the Junior Senator from Georgia, disappears at a gala reception honoring her work in children's education. The continuing efforts to find what has happened to her, which slowly reveal details of Sara's checkered past, are told from the points of view of the Senator, his children, an ambitious TV reporter and her cameraman/lover, and the FBI agents assigned to the case. The Agent In Charge, Graham Kelton, is himself haunted by a previous case that ended badly.