FBI agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis) is despondent and without hope, teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But when he is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a nine-year-old autistic child who’s parents have been mysteriously slain, he unknowingly stumbles into a situation that is anything but routine. While exploring the scene of the murders at a modest Chicago home, Jeffries discovers the missing boy hidden in a crawl space. The autistic child, Simon (Miko Hughes), is deeply traumatized and unable to speak, and the hard-edged agent immediately feels an intuitive connection with the boy’s pain and isolation. His cop instincts also tell him that the boy is in danger, prompting him to demand police surveillance at the hospital where Simon is being cared for. When the surveillance is inexplicably dropped, Jeffries takes the boy under his own protection and flees.

Now outcast from the FBI and unable to seek help from the police, Jeffries and Simon are alone, in peril and on the run.