Examining the bloody murder of a Miami father and his wife, which the teenage daughter survived, Horatio's team soon finds trails to a car rented by a man who flew in from New York City. There Horatio teams up with his CSI counterpart Mac Taylor, who is examining a cop-killing, possibly by the same murderer. Together they follow him, work out what erroneously drove him to Miami and arrive at an analogous crime scene, where rich Michael Hanover and his wife were killed, badly stabbed adolescent son Mike Jr. The matter of key access suggests some involvement of the janitor.

Henry Darius, a man who killed several women in New York, claims that he also killed a woman in Miami and offers to show them where he buried her. The plane transporting him suddenly has to make an emergency landing and Dairus escapes. He kills some people to get their car. Horatio learns that the plane was sabotaged and he thinks Darius had a hand in it. Horatio sends for New York Detective Mac Taylor who was the one who caught Darius. Horatio decides to look at the woman's disappearance again and discovers that the husband didn't tell him some things that could have helped him find his wife. Darius continues to go on a killing spree and Horatio learns that Darius is not the killer, so he has to find out how Darius knew about the woman.