Outwardly, Reed leads a typical yuppie life living in a stylish apartment with his wife Mona and their newborn daughter, it afforded by a white collar professional career. But Reed has a need not only to kill, but kill in a specific way, with an ice pick. Rather than his initial target, he instead chooses as his victim an English speaking prostitute. On the pretense of an out of town conference, he leaves home, and instead checks into an upscale hotel, goes through the motions of the murder to ensure that that part of it goes off without a hitch, and hires his target prostitute through a service, the intended victim named Jackie. What Reed does not anticipate is that Jackie has her own agenda for their time together, which he at times believes is on her knowledge and acceptance of her fate at his hands. Regardless, what ensues is a psychological cat and mouse game between the two, it never clear who is the mouse and who is the cat.