When teacher Meg Halloran and Vince Gutierrez, police chief of Port Silva, Calif., set out on a camping vacation, they have unexpected company: his sullen, angry niece, Cass Hall, who has been temporarily banished from home because of an unsuitable boyfriend. The three manage an uneasy truce until an automobile accident disables Gutierrez. He then must return to California by air while Meg and Cass drive. Leaving the hospital in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, the women are abducted by a mentally disturbed Vietnam veteran and a teenage boy. While Gutierrez galvanizes the Idaho police for a search, Meg and Cass must cooperate to plan their escape and find out why they are being held. Meanwhile, millionaire Michael Tannenbaum, a former antiwar activist charged with killing a policeman in the '60s, is dying of leukemia in California. His wife and fellow fugitive, Maureen, has been operating a home for battered women near Coeur d'Alene under an assumed name. Maureen races to his side, hoping for an inheritance to finance her cause.