Set in Pacific City, a fictional southern California town nationally recognized for its safety. A promiscuous teenager is murdered: suspects include a respected football coach, family members, an escaped convict and a high school student planning to replicate the Columbine massacre. A white supremacist group within the police department intent on furthering its racist agenda inhibits the investigation, led by a former Marine hero. The murdered girl was seeing a therapist for treatment of a sex addiction. Her promiscuity, revealed in her diary and exposed on a homemade sex tape, led to her murder. The lead detective on the case, a widower, falls in love with one of his subordinates who, unknown to him, an undercover FBI agent is sent to investigate the racist cops in the department. Their budding relationship is derailed when she is slain by one of the racist cops leading him to exact revenge outside of the justice system in a manner reminiscent of how he gained Marine Corps fame as "The Ghost."