Jenny Miller sells cars. She is one of the best in a tough profession where her gender is the sharpest of two-edged swords. Driven by the kind of internal engine that serves any breakout salesman in the sexist seventies and eighties, she dominates the showroom floor until one day she decides to move with her children to coastal North Carolina for a new start. Dr. David Sandler is a prominent psychiatrist specializing in hypnotism. When his personal life takes an unexpected turn, he devises a way to use his patients to help him out. The fact that they don't know how helpful they are being makes it easier for him to control things, even their deaths. He falls in love with Jenny and is determined to make her his bride. After all, she is already the mother of his child, though she doesn't know it. Colin Gregory Scott, a recently retired police detective looking for a new direction for his life following an unwanted divorce, takes a private investigating job referred by a friend. With the case finally behind him, he takes his son to the North Carolina coast to establish a bond, to renew his spirit and think about his next career. Little does he know that this will ultimately connect all the avenues of his life together.