Mary Elizabeth Laverneaux is beautiful, devious, and deadly. She returns to her home in Moultrie, Georgia in the summer of 1938 with a mission... ...to get her little girl before Jebediah Collins finds her. A year before, she had left her husband, Reggie, and daughter, Carlee, to follow the con man, living a life on-the-run with Collins and his ruthless partner, Ben. Taking off with $20,000 of Collins's cash, Mary Elizabeth hopes to leave behind her errant ways and start a new life with her daughter-but Collins is hot on her trail. At Whispering Pines, the Laverneaux family's ancestral home and one-time plantation, Reggie Laverneaux finds love again in the form of his childhood friend, Emily Winters. When Reggie is approached with a proposal to reopen the family mill by an investor from New York, things begin to look up for Reggie and his new family. But when Mary Elizabeth's return is tied to a hotel clerk's murder, Reggie must fight his demons-old and new-to protect the ones he loves. Collins will stop at nothing to get revenge on the woman who betrayed him; and as the bodies begin to pile up, Detectives Bill Mason and Cal Druggins are forced to act quickly to put an end to the terror ransacking the small, southern town. When Collins kidnaps Carlee, Mary Elizabeth fears the worse; she knows what the con man is capable of first-hand. Will they find Carlee before Collins goes too far?