On a seemingly ordinary Monday morning, an office secretary at Trusthouse, a reputable New Zealand Insurance firm, is astounded when she checks her answering machine. A blood-curdling, anonymous voice has left a message on the tape sometime over the weekend, informing her that her millionaire boss, Oscar Silver, has been kidnapped and is being held to ransom. The information given is very curt. The insurance company president's life is now for sale. The price tag is one million NZ dollars, and the time limit, 24 hours The voice was explicit: no police involvement or the old man prematurely meets his maker The old man's life is now thrust irrevocably into the nervous hands of his naturally tight-fisted eldest son, Isaac. At his wit's end, Silver's eldest son and Trusthouse second-in-command is now asking himself some frightening questions: Just how serious are the unknown assailants? Just how far are they prepared to go? Can Trusthouse afford to pay up? Can they afford not to? And just exactly, how far is Isaac prepared to go to find out? Is he willing to gamble, wager with his father's life, or will he quickly cough up the dough?.