With Michael preoccupied with his burn notice, Sam takes the case of Gillian Walsh, a supervisor at a defense contractor who is being blackmailed and forced to use her security clearance to help smuggle Turkish heroin into the U.S. Gillian's friend and fellow blackmail victim Melissa is oddly reluctant to help… and Sam and Fiona soon discover why. Melissa and her husband Kent are actually involved in the heroin smuggling operation and have been using Gillian to do their dirty work. Sam and Fiona turn to Michael for help in orchestrating a reverse-blackmail scheme.

But cornering Kent proves to be a very dangerous and difficult proposition. Attempts on Michael and Gillian's lives leave Sam and company with no choice but to help Gillian smuggle one last batch of heroin… and set Kent and Melissa up to take the fall. But when Kent's bosses show up to clean up loose ends, Kent and Melissa are murdered, Sam is kidnapped, and Fiona barely escapes with her life.

Meanwhile, Michael has his hands full on the burn notice front. Phillip Cowan, the man who burned him, has come to Miami and he wants to sit down with Michael face-to-face. When their first rendezvous doesn't work out, Michael and Cowan must play a delicate game of cloak and dagger, trading coded messages to set up a secure meeting where all will be revealed… but it doesn't go as planned. Cowan is taken out by a sniper's bullet, leaving Michael to wonder why he wasn't the target.