Joe Dillard has become the district attorney in Northeast Tennessee and is confronted with the most difficult case of his life. Three young women have been murdered, and Dillard becomes deeply involved in the case with Sheriff Leon Bates. Dillard soon realizes that he is up against an enemy that he has never before encountered; someone so rich and so powerful that the course of justice could easily be altered by money and politics. When the villains start threatening Dillard's family, he asks himself the most difficult question he has ever faced: "When is it reasonable under the law to kill? What circumstances make it reasonable to use violence to defend one's own family?