The fourth season of Burn Notice starts where the season three season finale left off with Michael having been arrested, vanished off the grid, and sitting in a chair. A man who says his name is Vaughn comes in explaining that Michael is in a secret prison. He gives Michael a file to read and after he reads it Vaughn explains he needs Michaels help.  Vaughn convinces Michael to give him a chance to prove they are on the same side before he decides by taking him with him to interview a possible lead. While interview the lead they are attacked, barely escape, and the lead is killed.

Michael decides that he is in. That he would rather hunt the person who is doing bad things than be mad at the agency that burned him.  After getting safely back to Miami, Michael goes to see his mother who is relieved to see him. She tells him that she has not spoken to Fiona and that he should go see her. The reunion with Fiona is quick as she and Sam are trying to clean up the mess they created when they took a case, and it really needs a little Michael Westen to help clean it up.  The client is Winston, a guy who helped a girl get away from a biker thug. Now, the biker’s entire gang now has orders to kill Winston.

Michael comes up with the plan to make it look like Winston is part of the biker gang so that if he died the FBI would be able to investigate the gang. Michael and Sam take Winston to the leader “Big Ed’s” house and convince him to call off the hit. The biker who wanted the hit show up at Big Eds and says he is not stopping and a gun fight ensues where Michael, Sam, and Winston have to help rescue Big Ed from his own men. 

After a short car chase, and a little creativity from Fiona on getting the rest of the gang to follow her.  She leads them to Sam, Michael, Winston and Big Ed. The Gang member who shot Big Ed is stopped and Winston is actually made part of the gang (including a full tattoo), and he is fully safe.

After solving the issue for Sam and Fiona, Michael goes to see his mother and they have the heart to heart that they have needed to have for awhile about why he has been doing what he does. Michael then takes the information that Vaughn provided and heads into a secure location to find out information on the lead that was killed. Michael get’s out safely but come to find out the ID he was using belongs to another spy and while they won’t prosecute the spy, he is black listed. Michael realizes that he has just burned another spy.