Jim Monday’s wife Julia left him for Bernd Kohler, a slick doctor from East Germany and Jim, still in love with her, has agreed to give her half his money and half his business, but that’s not enough for Kohler, he wants it all.

Jim and his best friend attorney David Askew are crossing Second Street in Belmont Shore, the fashionable place to live in Long Beach, California, to meet with Julia and her lawyer to sign the papers, giving her what she wants, when a speeding car comes out of nowhere, bearing down on them. A mysterious voice tells Jim to jump back, he does, but David is struck by the hit and run driver and is killed.

Kohler, who had been watching from a second story window, is on the spot in an instant, proclaiming that he’s a doctor and, when he offers his help, Jim attacks him and is arrested. The police handcuff him, toss him in the back of a police cruiser and are transporting him to jail, when someone shoots at the car and now Jim knows that the hit and run that killed his friend was no accident. Someone is trying to kill him and Jim has a pretty good idea who.

Jim is languishing in a holding cell, when the mysterious voice comes back. At first he thinks he may be going crazy, but after a bit he realizes that a Maori woman named Donna Tuhiwai, held in captivity half a world away in New Zealand, is somehow communicating with him. Somehow she’s in his head, sees what he sees, feels what he feels.

But before he gets a chance to adjust to this new and unsettling development, two men, who claim to be attorneys hired by Kohler, show up outside his cell, supposedly to bail him out, but once alone in an interrogation room in the police station, Jim recognizes (through Donna the voice in his head) that one of them is the driver of the Buick that killed his friend. Jim reacts, using the element of surprise, kills them, escapes and now he’s wanted for murder.

Jim knows in his gut that Kohler is the one behind the attempts on his life. The doctor wants him dead before he divorces Julia, so that all his money will be hers before she marries him. Jim is determined to get even and to save Julia from the evil doctor, who has taken Julia to his fortress home in Northern California. And if that isn’t isn’t enough on his plate, Donna, that voice in his head, tells him that she’s afraid her captor is going to kill her. So, Jim not only has to save his wife, but he has to get on a plane as soon as possible, get to New Zealand and rescue Donna, but he’s afraid of flying.

Then there’s the Gecko beast, a creature come to life right out of Maori folklore. It’s deadly, controlled by Kohler and on Jim’s trail.