The team investigates the deaths of two college students who were in Miami on spring break. The first is a teenage girl found dead on a beach with her neck broken and human bite marks on her legs. The second is a young man found in the bottom of a hotel swimming pool who apparently died before he hit the water.

An inmate at a massive Miami prison complex is stabbed to death in the prison yard. Shortly after Horatio arrives on the scene, a helicopter appears above the correctional facility. He immediately fears that the murder was a decoy to set up an escape. That's confirmed as three prisoners hop aboard the chopper and flee. As the investigation gets underway, the identities of the fugitives become known and a horrible realization sweeps over Horatio: two of the escapees are cold-blooded killers who already have their next victims picked out, and the other is a child molester who he recently put away.