Ash is looking for his sister, Tria. He's come halfway across the galaxy in search of her and the vital information she had obtained on those who wiped out half their family and a Vyan colony. He refuses to accept she is dead, but he has only partial coordinates for her possible landfall site - a lake somewhere in America's northeast. He has had to hunt and stay undiscovered in an alien, potentially hostile environment, as well as keep his differences hidden from the native inhabitants. After a year of searching, he has reached Amassol, Vermont. Conn and his partner, Faye, are PIs with an uneasy working relationship. Conn is gay but deep in the closet. He is restless, unsettled in his life, a situation not helped by the tension and animosity between him and Faye. They have been assigned to track down Angi, an underage runaway whose parents want her back before she reaches her eighteenth birthday. But Angi is a wild child with a mile-wide streak of stubborn independence and she has no intention of going back to Florida with them. She is involved with the leader of a street gang in Amassol, and though she has discovered Ash's secret, she has become good friends with him. They all meet up in Amassol, and when Ash and Conn encounter each other, the attraction is immediate and almost overwhelming. And impossible. Ash's mission and Conn's assignment, as well as rival street gangs, make sure of that.