After a fire destroys his home and business, Thomas Ashton is shattered when he learns that his fiancee was killed in the inferno. The police want him for questioning, and faced with prison -- or worse, the hangman's noose -- Tom flees London for the relative safety of a job on Seacombe Island.

Life on Seacombe seems monotonous, but secrets abound. Instead of the anonymity he craves, Tom is quickly swept up into a web of deceit involving smugglers, government agents, and a volatile organic energy source refined from the native Hekate orchid.

Tom is recruited to keep an eye on the smugglers and finds out some things about his old friends that he would rather not know. But when his new friends are attacked one by one, Tom realizes he must get off Seacombe Island before it is too late.