Nicola is a young woman on holiday from her job at the Embassy in Greece, who agrees to meet up with an older friend on Crete. She arrives before her friend, and goes exploring in the mountains above the village where she will be staying. There she finds Mark, who has been wounded by a gunshot, and his Greek friend Lambis, and ends up tending to Mark for a night while Lambis goes back to their boat.
Nicola finds out that Mark's brother Colin was kidnapped by Cretan men after they witnessed the possible murder of a Greek man, and Mark himself was wounded and presumed dead by the kidnappers/murderers. Nicola goes down to the village and meets up with her friend Frances, but can't seem to stop thinking about Mark and his brother, and does some sleuthing of her own, though she promised Mark she'd stay out of it.