Angela Bennett lives the life of a computer geek: she works from home as a contract employee of Cathedral Software as a software analyst, lives a reclusive life on her computer and as such has few friends or acquaintances who even know what she looks like. Even her mother, who has Alzheimer's, no longer recognizes her.
Cathedral's fortunes in the computer software world are increasing with what looks to be the universally used Gatekeeper security program, which they developed. During a period when Angela is dealing with what looks to be a virus in one of Cathedral's new games, she takes a vacation to Mexico. There, she meets and falls for the suave Jack Devlin... but Jack is not all he seems: he works for the Praetorians, who have stolen Angela's identity - and provided her with a new identity with a criminal history...
