Alex Destephano

It's Mardi Gras season in post-Katrina New Orleans. City officials expect record crowds and the biggest boost to the Crescent City economy since the big storm. Alexandra Lee Destephano, legal counsel for Crescent City Medical Center, is anticipating her third Mardi Gras season and her date with Mitch Landry to the biggest Mardi Gras ball in New Orleans. But hold on. Alex is stat-paged to the hospital and learns from her boss and former husband that the wife of the governor of Louisiana has been found unconscious and covered in blood in her hospital room.

With POTUS and members of Congress in the Big Easy for a political convention, an unidentified killer virus in the Crescent City emergency room has physicians baffled, hospital staff frightened, and the CDC on their way to assist. When the first death from the mysterious virus is a Secret Service agent guarding the president, a terrorist attack is feared. Matters get worse with the murder of a prominent politician in the French Quarter.