After giving up on her Ph.D., Shannon Fairchild, a brilliant but alienated young woman, has settled into an unambitious life cleaning the homes of the wealthy. The sudden and horrific murder of her parents, both respected academics, leads her to discover that they were part of the radical anti-war movement of the 1960s and to suspect that their killer's motive may lie in their past. She soon finds that they were friends of Diana Burke and John Paul West, two of America's most wanted fugitives, anti-war militants who went underground after a fatal bombing in 1968 and never resurfaced.

Propelled by her mother's dying words - "Find them and warn them" - Shannon sets out on a mission to track down the couple and tell them that someone is after them - someone much more dangerous than the FBI. Her search, which begins in California and ranges through much of western America, takes her into unexplored territory as she discovers an unexpected personal connection to Burke and West. As she unearths long-buried secrets while trying to stay one step ahead of a shadowy killer, she feels the passions of the tumultuous Sixties being reborn, and she now knows that nothing is more dangerous than someone willing to die for a cause