After bombs decimated their home, seventeen year old Nizar and his little sister, Rima, seek to escape the horrors of war-torn Syria. With no family to turn to, their only hope is to reunite with their estranged cousin, Sayid, who lives in the USA. Unknown to them, Sayid has developed covert ties with an extremist group. In Spain, the siblings stow away inside a container on a ship bound for New York. The vessel encounters a ferocious storm and the siblings are exposed to a cargo filled with deadly gas. Nizar and Rima's dangerous trek entraps them in a nationally televised trial connected to a terrorist who bombed a plane bound for New York.

Joe Barrett, a young and somewhat unconventional lawyer, is unexpectedly drawn into the investigation as he tries to fathom how the two young stowaways were exposed to the sarin gas aboard the containership. With help from Dalia, a quick-witted bartender, he unravels a plot that endanger the lives of those in the New York courtroom involved in sentencing the terrorist.