It's easy to be depressed if you're McAdams, a homicide detective whose last two partners have been murdered and you think it's your fault, especially when random bodies keep piling up on the San Francisco waterfront while you're trying to work out the subtle differences between vengeance and justice. His personal and professional lives become even more muddled when Sofia shows up - a refugee from a Russian orphanage with a plan for a better life, despite being #1 on everybody's hit list. She makes him an offer he can't refuse: sanctuary in exchange for information. It gets complicated when the string of disconnected murders morphs into a far more sinister scenario, featuring billion-dollar drug deals and a white slavery pipeline under the bloody guidance of a psychopathic CIA reject and a wannabe crime lord. McAdams and Sofia stumble across a tangle of festering secrets -- both private and criminal -- whose unraveling puts them at risk. Their joint and ambivalent quest for vengeance finally leads them to a showdown on the San Francisco waterfront and an explosive end to the secrets, including their own illusions about sanctuary.