Jörg Albrecht has barely served his sentence for abuse and murder when his body is found in a garbage can. He was intercepted in front of the prison gate, kidnapped and murdered shortly thereafter. The Stuttgart detectives Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz know who the two main suspects are: Frank and Simone Mendt, the parents of Mareike, who was murdered by Albrecht more than 15 years ago. The Mendts deny the crime. But it is abundantly clear how much the loss of her daughter continues to overshadow her life. And how they suffer from the fact that Albrecht always kept the second man involved in the crime a secret. If they got Albrecht to reveal the man's name, the inspectors must protect him from his pursuers.In fact, Lannert and Bootz find clues to his identity.
But just as the net is about to close, Sebastian Bootz realizes that his daughter Maja has disappeared. Author Holger-Karsten Schmidt and director Roland Suso Richter put the inspectors under a lot of pressure in this 17th case involving the Stuttgart team. The search for the perpetrator is quickly ended, but the prevention of another murder turns into a cat-and-mouse game in which Sebastian Bootz gets into a fight with himself, with his colleagues and with a perpetrator who is determined to do anything, for whom the life has lost its meaning anyway. A nice side effect of the story: it brings a reunion with Maja Schöne as Sebastian Bootz' ex-wife Julia.