Private investigator Vince Reid has spent a decade avoiding Manson, the small town where a public scandal ended his police career. He promised his former chief he would never return, but an insurance assignment brings him back to investigate a suspicious car crash. A young woman survived; her professor husband did not. As Reid examines the circumstances, rumours link the couple to a missing student and suggest that the crash may not have been an accident. What begins as a limited professional inquiry draws him into the secrets of the community he escaped. To pursue the truth, Reid must choose whether to risk the new life he has built and confront the town and past he tried to leave behind.