It was truly a crime against innocents. Eleven dolphins, part of an experiment in healing, are found slaughtered in their saltwater tanks. When Thorn, a Florida renegade who has lived a life of fierce freedom, investigates, he triggers a vicious attack that leaves him paralysed from the waist down, plagued by unrelenting pain. Now Thorn is starting over in a wheelchair, bitter enough to drive his lover away, desperate enough to seek miracles on the fringes of medical science-where his childhood friend, now a doctor, is doing cutting-edge research in a quest for the ultimate painkiller.