Sergeant William "Dutch" Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford) is a police sergeant in the internal affairs department of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, working on a case involving a crooked detective. He is married to a fashion editor. Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a Congresswoman running for re-election. She is married to a lawyer and has a teenage daughter. A plane bound for Miami crashes, and everyone on board is killed. Dutch realizes that his wife was on the plane, but the airline has no record of her. He believes that she was registered under another name and was having an affair, and he finds out that she was sitting next to Kay's husband. Wanting to learn more about the affair, he meets with Kay. Concerned about the publicity, she is not willing to talk and tells him to leave her alone.