Frans Hals' painting, "the Cavalier in White," disappears from the San Francisco gallery. Art security expert Joanna Stark returns from self-imposed retirement to solve the crime from a building she had made burglarproof. But art theft leads to murder, friends become strangers and the past stalks the present. Especially when Joanna's nemesis - a brilliant art thief whose ice-blue eyes haunt her dreams - becomes the most dangerous and perplexing piece in a puzzle that gets closer to home every minute.