Mike picks up a man who has just been given $10,000 to help an immigrant mother reunite with her lost child. When the fare leaves the money in the backseat of the cab, Mike experiences a night of manic complications trying to return it. He takes a woman in labor to the hospital, and later reunites her with the absent father; his cab is towed; he's hauled in by the police; and he enlists the help of a pair of street hustlers peddling fake Rolexes in an effort to assist a woman who is being blackmailed. When he finally hooks up with his passenger and returns the money, we discover that the man is a con artist who is using the money to play high-stakes poker.

Heather, Mikey and Grizz keep vigil as Marcellus and the rest of the force hunt down Johnny Scanlon, who has kidnapped Mike and threatens to execute him at the exact same as Johnny's brother Jimmy is executed by the state because Mike precipitated the incident many years before which led to Jimmy's killing a cop.

Starting out fresh, Mike puts some distance between himself and Marcellus, grieves over Grizz's transfer to New Orleans, and moves into a new house, where he meets his energetic new neighbor, Liz Garza, who turns out to be an ex-nun turned probation officer; Jamie Farrell, a young man with a troubled past who isn't quite what he seems, enlists Mike's help after he witnesses a quadruple murder and is pursued by the D.E.A. agents who committed the crime; Mike seeks out Marcellus for information, and is warned to steer clear; risking his career, Marcellus saves Mike and Jaime from certain death at the hand of the agents; faced with a serious illness, Marcellus reaches out for Mike's friendship.

Mike helps an amnesiac regain her memory to uncover who has marked her for murder; working with Mike, Jaime uncovers her unsavory past, but not before Mike falls for her; Jamie pretends to be Marcellus to impress a girl he meets online, and Marcellus goes along with it, in exchange for Jamie's painting his kitchen.

After Jamie and his friend Wilson are jumped by gay-bashing thugs and the beat cops are reluctant to take the crime seriously, Mike enlists Marcellus's help in obtaining reports of other assaults in the area to determine if the cops are failing to report hate crimes properly; Marcellus becomes concerned about the future of his marriage when he learns that Deborah has been seeing another man; Wilson is murdered after he recognizes one of his attackers, and Mike finally uncovers why the beat cops were reluctant to file complete reports that could point out patterns in the gay-bashings in their district.

When a drug dealer framed by Mike and Marcellus after they were unable to arrest him legitimately is released from prison, he begins to wield a path of destruction through Mike's life, endangering Liz and Jamie; Mike and Liz decide to move their relationship forward.