Sue Thomas is a Deaf woman with the ability to read lips. She moves to Washington, D.C. to begin her new job as an FBI agent and discovers that her new job is not all it's cracked up to be. Due to an out-of-date directory, she accidentally vents her disappointment to Special Agent Jack Hudson, who is impressed by her honesty and tests her skills by having her read a colleague's lips, discovering he is planning a weekend away with a woman. Jack asks Sue to join his Unit of Special Investigators, where she discovers that her new friend Lucy is the girlfriend of Myles, the man Sue saw earlier planning a trip with a different woman.

Sue is put in the uncomfortable position of knowing that her new colleague Myles is having an affair behind his girlfriend Lucy's back while also trying to prove that, now that Jack has given her the chance of a lifetime, she has what it takes to follow through.