A gruesome series of murders shakes Cologne. Seemingly indiscriminately, an unknown man kidnaps elderly people, ties them up and then lets them starve to death mercilessly. Inspector Anna Melcher is assigned to the case. Since her divorce, the investigator has been suffering from panic attacks, which she tries to hide from her colleagues. And right now, Anna can't afford a sign of weakness, because the merciless perpetrator has another victim in his power. Without forensic traces, however, Anna has no choice but to look for connections in the victims' past. And indeed: A clue leads her back to the eighties to a cruel case of child abuse. Together with her new partner, the pedantic Frieder Tann, Anna must now act quickly. But that's easier said than done: Because Frieder thinks little of Anna's unconventional investigative methods - and the perpetrator is about to complete his horrific work ...