Harland Duncan is the sheriff of a small mountain town in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina who has two major crimes to solve at once. The first crime involves the unauthorized burial of a newborn baby in an old cemetery that is connected to the building of the Great Fontana Dam. He is called by the cemetery caretaker early in the morning with the bad news of the baby's grave that seems to have appeared overnight. The grave looks hand dug and closed with a small clutch of wildflowers tied in a ribbon on top. Harland's calls for the coroner to exhume the body while his deputy Racheal Dehart arranges a decent burial for the newborn. That evening Emily Davis a young school teacher is late for dinner at her boyfriend's mother's house. At first on one is alarmed because she frequently goes by the nursing home to feed her beloved Nana dinner. However, as the minutes and hours pass Emily's boyfriend Gary Tate has a feeling that something is very wrong and goes out looking for her. He finds her car abandon on the highway, with the driver's door standing wide open and her personal belonging scattered in the seats and floor. Harland sets up emergency lights to look for clues while Gary and Emily's family push him for answers to who took Emily and why.