Business is slow for Burlington, Vermont, private investigator John "Hack" Loomis, so when Loomis's assistant Connie Noble asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend Belle Ryerson, Loomis agrees. Belle went missing after attending a meeting of a local UFO group run by a charismatic psychiatrist who treats people who believe they've been abducted by aliens, and also by a woman who claims to be in contact with an alien mother ship.
Thomas McCall thought his busy life couldn't get any more complicated. Until Carla, his former lover, turns up and asks him to hide her for a few days. McCall reluctantly agrees, but Carla never turns up at the hideaway. Her new boyfriend, Vince, is frantic. Why has Carla run away? What will Vince do to her if he finds her? And why, against all sense, does McCall start searching for her?
