Last Embrace

In a Mexican cantina across the border from El Paso, a government agent senses danger as an informant meeting goes wrong. He shoves his wife Dorothy to the ground to shield her as gunfire erupts, and Dorothy is killed in the ensuing chaos. The shock triggers a nervous breakdown that lands him in a Connecticut sanitarium.

Harry spends five months in a Connecticut sanitarium recovering from the trauma. Upon release, he returns to New York with a growing sense that unseen forces are targeting him. The experience leaves him paranoid and unstable.

On the way back to New York City, Harry nearly falls into the path of an express train, and later discovers the lipstick-case assignment slip is blank. His agency contact insists there is no work for him, deepening his fear that he is a marked man. He begins to doubt his own safety and purpose.

Back in his apartment, Harry finds it occupied by Ellie Fabian, a doctoral student who claims a Princeton sublet. She explains she has nowhere else to go and shows him a note slipped under the door written in Hebrew that he cannot read.

Harry takes the note to a local rabbi, who can only partially decode the Hebrew and reveals the phrase 'Avenger of Blood.' The rabbi then calls Sam Urdell, informing him that Harry has visited, and Harry senses he is being tailed.

Harry confronts his supervisor Eckart, who reassures him that the agency has higher priorities and that he is not yet ready to return to fieldwork. Eckart insists Harry is safe for now, but Harry's paranoia deepens as surveillance continues.

Harry gives Ellie money and urges her to stay in a hotel to avoid accidental targeting, but she remains in the apartment and instead suggests taking the Hebrew note to a Princeton expert. This tension tests their fragile bond as danger seems to close in.

Harry awakens from a nightmare and tells Ellie about Dorothy's death. He takes a prescribed pill but spits out that it is cyanide, revealing his fragile grip on reality.

The following morning they depart for Princeton. On the train, Ellie shares a memory about her grandmother while Harry notices Quittle and an old man watching them.

At Princeton, Richard Peabody decodes the note and links it to several murders connected to white-slavery victims. He reveals that Harry is the only survivor and that someone wants to meet him in the bell tower courtyard the next day.

In the bell tower courtyard, Quittle lures Harry into a trap and a shootout erupts. Harry kills Quittle and then encounters Sam Urdell, who explains that he and his colleagues are investigating the blood murders.

In a Niagara Falls hotel, Ellie dresses as a prostitute and lures Bernie Meckler into a bathtub, where she drowns him. The murder is carried out as part of her larger mission tied to victims of white slavery.

Harry and Sam piece together that Ellie is the killer behind the blood murders. They drive toward Niagara Falls to confront her, where she confesses she loves him but tries to kill him.

Ellie escapes onto a tour bus and Harry steals another, chasing her through the tunnels of the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant. The pursuit grows increasingly perilous as the environment becomes a trap.

The pursuit leads to the Journey Behind the Falls, where Harry and Ellie grapple at the edge. Ellie plummets to her death as Harry reaches the brink, bringing the violent pursuit to a tragic close.