It's mid-August in the Outer Banks village of Corolla and Fire Chief Colleen McCabe is conducting rookie training and spending increasingly more time with her best friend, Sheriff Bill Dorman. The wild horses have been relocated to the sanctuary, and the town is occupied with the upcoming local theatre production. All is right with the world. But when a member of the acting troupe is found dead in the dunes after an emergency training exercise and Bill's ex-fiancee, a glamorous soap actress, arrives in town for a film shoot, Colleen knows trouble is back with a vengeance. A second member of the theatre company is discovered dead at the Whalehead Club, and Colleen is forced to put aside her feelings about her relationship with Bill and work with him to uncover who is murdering the thespians and why. She discovers as much drama offstage as on and quickly finds herself swept up in the intrigue of the community theatre group, and struggling to keep her men at the firehouse focused. As the danger mounts and the killer's identity becomes clearer, Bill warns her off the investigation. But despite his warning, Colleen is determined to stop the killer before he or she strikes again, to her own peril.