In a cheap motel room, KENZIE is listening in on someone via a surveillance device when her Best Friend arrives. We learn that they are both small-time personal investigators living hand-to-mouth as stringers, muck-raking what they can for the gossip press and local news just to get by while their dreams of becoming real journalists fade away. Kenzie has found ELEANOR, an it-girl who disappeared years ago who she’s obsessed with and believes has a scandalous background. Her Best Friend, who’s clearly into her, isn’t so sure there’s much meat on the bone with this and he tries to talk her into leaving the business for good. However there’s a twist; Kenzie’s most mysterious client who she’s reported back to about the scoop only wants to know one thing; if a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu has been on the scene, and that’s gotten her intrigued. However, just then, her listening device fails and, as she leaves to tend to it, the Best Friend steals a kiss, leaving things awkward between them.
Meanwhile, in the next room, an Entrepreneur and his Assistant are working on a life-changing pitch; they plan to make big waves in the world of marketing and artificial intelligence. The Assistant worships the Entrepreneur who is a legend among his peers. When the Entrepreneur takes a break to get coffee from reception, he crosses paths with ELEANOR and they have a heart-to-heart. Eleanor shows herself to be complex but tragic; someone who has crafted so much of her image she has lost sight of who she really is. She sees right into the Entrepreneur’s kindred soul and knows he’s just as lost as she is. Passion burns fast and intensely between them and they hurry back to her room to get to know one another more intimately.
Kenzie, having now broken into the empty motel room next to Eleanor’s, attempts to fix the listening device she’s hidden on the wall only to have a Wise Guy and Hit Woman walk in on her. Failing to give a good reason for being there and her cover now blown, she finds herself held captive and tortured by them because they believe she’s a plant. By sticking it out and listening in on their arguments over how to go about things, she learns that Eleanor is the daughter of a notorious crime lord who they intend to wait for and kill. Therefore, although Kenzie might be going through a world of pain, she may also be getting the biggest story of her life. Meanwhile, her Best Friend is able to hear everything through the listening device yet cannot pluck up the courage to come help her.
We go back to Eleanor’s life and deeper into her personality when she stumbles upon a lonely old Art Forger living at the motel. A man who’s given up on his creativity but finds inspiration within her. While he paints a portrait of her smoking idly in his room, she gives more insight into her relationship with her crime lord father, a man she needs to both hug and hate before she can move on. Her dislike for those who obsess about her is confronted and questioned with a tough back and forth where the Art Forger ruthlessly probes her psyche until she has an upsetting revelation; she isn’t the antithesis of all that criticises her, she is the manifestation of it. Meanwhile, the Entrepreneur becomes unwittingly entangled in the assassin mission with Kenzie who herself now has to face some uncomfortable truths about what she does, how she goes about it, and what it has all come to given that ultimately she is the one who’s led everyone here.
This all comes to a head when the Wise Guy figures the crime lord will never show. Drunk on his own bloodlust and against the wishes of the Hit Woman, he takes Kenzie into Eleanor’s room so she can later report on what she’ll witness - him brutally killing Eleanor in an attempt to incite her father into a personal showdown, but there’s a twist as Eleanor is waiting for them with a gun. Multiple standoffs ensue and become more complicated when the Best Friend tries to come to Kenzie’s rescue and not only fails but has his heart broken when he learns she has no mutual feelings for him. Shots are fired and there’s bloodshed on both sides until Kenzie and Eleanor just about scrape through and air their different approaches to life - one as the hunter and the other as the prey. In the end, Kenzie comes to accept where her obsession stems from and we’re reminded about what friendship is and what it takes to start a new one while Eleanor faces the reality that innocent little girls can easily grow up to become their fathers.