Transportation expert Owen Allison returns for a family emergency and is plunged into scandal scams and murder down home in West Virginia. His eccentric aunt Lizzie claims to have shot a man in a truck on Dismal Mountain, where developers are ravaging the land. Owen knows his aunt is covering for someone, but whom?
As he enlists the help of an old girlfriend, now a nun, the truth about what's really going on beneath the cover of darkness on Dismal Mountain becomes inexorably entwined in the good Sister's apparent suicide. Knowing for certain that it was murder, Owen sets out to find the truth, a twisted conspiracy of big money, deadly schemes and ruthless people who kill to cover their tracks. For them, Owen has become public enemy number one.