The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his team-mates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late summer twilight. But then a voice, scared, calls out to him from the edge of a nearby lake. He walks to the sound, where two men squat at the water's edge. In front of them, face down, is something that used to be a girl. The local cops haven't...

Apache hit man, Wilson "Crow" Cromartie returns to Paradise after ten years to take Amber Francisco back to her father in Florida; but before returning, he is supposed to kill her mother Fiona, per her father's orders. But Cromartie doesn't kill women. And now it's up to police chief Jesse Stone to provide all of them with protection.