A loud blast in the early morning shakes a neighborhood and alarms a community. An unthinkable tragedy has occurred: an explosion at a chemical plant has left workers dead and the son of a state senator missing. Plant management, emboldened by powerful political allies, scrambles to hide the real cause. It's up to Jon Barrett, a new investigator for the government, to discover the truth. Haunted by his role in an earlier fatal accident, he struggles to find the courage to fight for answers.

Along the way, he meets beleaguered plant employees desperate to toe the company line, an eccentric environmentalist with secrets of her own, a television news crew itching for something bigger, and a victim's family painstakingly reconstructing their lives. As Jon weaves together the evidence, he learns that the flaw that led to this tragedy is in plants throughout the country, and if he can't fix it in time, more people will die. But as he closes in on the facts, tries to save workers, and attempts to get justice for those who died, he also learns just how far the company will go to destroy him and stop his incriminating investigation.