Set ten years after the conclusion of Jumper, David Rice- a young adult man with the rare spatial ability to teleport both short and long distances- has married Millie and occasionally works for the National Security Agency, only accepting jobs that he finds to be morally acceptable.

Without David, Millie is stranded at their secret hideaway: a cliff wall cave in a remote part of Texas.

David's captors have implanted him with a device that can trigger his vagus nerve, causing him to become violently ill. His shackles give him the run of the room, but at random intervals he is signaled to jump to a painted box on the floor in the center of the room, or else the device is triggered.

His captors take him on a field trip to test very sensitive equipment that can detect his jumps within a few hundred yards because of the change in mass.

Trying to do it fast enough that the device isn't triggered, he learns to jump back and forth repeatedly, in effect remaining in mid-jump, in two places at once.

One of David's captors, a beautiful woman named Hyacinth Pope, tempts him sexually, but he refuses.

When he is given a package to deliver to a sensitive foreign location, he correctly deduces that it is a bomb, and that he is now considered expendable.

A film based on the second book titled Reflex was the planned sequel to Jumper.