While at the opening of a kabuki performance at the Kennedy Center's Opera House theater in D.C., two close friends of San Francisco art dealer and martial arts practitioner Jim Brodie are gunned down by a professional assassin. One of them, Sayuri Tanaka, was a former college roommate of America's first lady, and knowing Brodie's reputation as an experienced troubleshooter, FLOTUS implores him to go after the killer.