Hadley Carroll's big weekend plans include visiting the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, with her friends and newfound family, watching an action scene being shot downtown for a Hollywood adventure film, celebrating a birthday, and quilting in Paducah Quilters Quorum.

But Hadley, a journalist and the mayor of Paducah, receives bad news from Ashley, the eighteen-year-old who lives with her, and from Dakota, Hadley's best friend.

Then, when the movie stunt goes terribly wrong and the crimes that follow threaten to tear the city apart, Hadley and her usual entourage set out to catch the criminals.

But the stakes grow higher and the stresses become personal when someone close to her goes missing, and Hadley finds herself in unfamiliar terrain when the system breaks down.

She solicits assistance from private-eye Garrett Hunt and from her boyfriend, Detective Brandon Green, but this time justice may elude them all.