For the past twelve years that private investigator Bill Smith has owned his cabin in the woods in a small upstate New York town, he has used it as an escaping, a place of refuge, never letting city life or his work intrude. All that changes, however, when Eva Colgate, a local farmer, summons Bill to meet with her. She wants him to quietly recover some recently stolen possessions--items which, if known to be hers, would expose her past and a secret she has kept for thirty years.

As Bill, with the help of his sometime-partner Lydia Chin, begins the search for the stolen goods, the usual quiet of this rural county abruptly shatters. A local hoodlum is found murdered in the basement of a local bar, the young daughter of a prominent businessman runs away from home, and Jimmy Antonelli, a teenager with a troubled past who is tied to these events, is missing. Now Bill and Lydia have to find the missing boy--and uncover the connection among these events--in time to save him.