Two hildhood friends, growing up in a small Oregon town, become reacquainted after a woman is abducted while attending a genetics conference in San Diego, California. Sarah, now in her early 30s, works as an investigative journalist for a San Francisco newspaper. Ricki, after obtaining a Ph.D., realizes her dream of working in marine biology by heading up a molecular genetics lab at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in La Jolla, California. Investigations of the missing woman by the FBI, NCIS, HSA and international security agencies reveal that eco-terrorism and industrial espionage are, simultaneously, complicit in a plot to steal and patent application of thermal hysteresis in mammalian living tissue. Ricki's biotech research on antifreeze proteins, in association with Dr. Tankersley's renowned research at UC San Diego, makes her the next probable target. Her father, working for NCIS, is highly protective and reluctant to tell his daughter of the peril, but Sarah rushes to warn her friend of the developing danger, catapulting them both into a dangerous predicament reminiscent of an event that occurred over a decade ago in the last summer of high school. Ricki changes her career path after realizing that her brand of research fuels the agenda of cutthroat businessmen, mercenaries and radicalized environmentalists. Sarah abandons attachments to her childhood days on the Oregon coast and strides fully into her life as an award-winning journalist.