Kevin Maloney has a strong inclination to serve others. Now separated from the military, where as a US Navy hospital corpsman he treated wounded Marines on the battlefields of Afghanistan, he's applied to become a firefighter in his hometown of Philadelphia. In the interim, he sleeps on his brother's couch and works in a nearby Penn's Landing tourist attraction.

Mark Francini is a sports reporter willing to take chances to get the attention of the sports-media complex. When a local rising-star basketball player named Jerome Lawrence makes an unexpected exit from the public eye, Mark is bent on making something of the story.

A rekindled friendship with old school buddy Kevin Maloney quickly leads the pair into the neighborhoods of West Philly, but when they locate the athlete near his childhood home, they are shocked to discover the aspiring pro is dead, his corpse abandoned and disfigured. Mark is ready to write the ending to Jerome's sad story, but Kevin can't let it go and enlists the help of his uncle, a priest and seminary professor, to sort out the details. Together, they unravel related events and make connections that seem unbelievable. Soon the cooperation between Kevin's circle of companions and police sets the stage for the wild capture of a previously unimaginable menace to the city.