Inspector Ellen Lucas is on her way to her new office in Nuremberg when another car crashes into her side. Lucas discovers a dead woman in the trunk of the accident car. The driver fled the scene of the accident with a boy. Lucas' new colleagues quickly found out: the driver's name is Franz Vegener, he is the dead man's grandson and has just been released from prison. Did he kill his own grandmother Grete Saller? Franz Vegener had a motive: Grete Saller testified against him in court when he was sentenced to imprisonment for serious bodily harm. Ironically, his grandmother has himreveal. The woman he lived with as a teenager because his mother Marie Vegener was overwhelmed with the youngster. The boy Franz fled with is his little brother Maik.
Ellen Lucas suspects that the boy has witnessed the crime and is now in mortal danger as a hostage. Together with her new team, detectives Werner Fitz and Betty Sedlacek, she pulls out all the stops to find the two brothers. With the additional support of police psychologist Magnus Guttmann, she manages to track down the brothers. But the situation escalates dramatically and threatens to escalate.