In the days following Hurricane Florence, three boys walk along the beaches of North Carolina's Barrier Islands. Amidst the wreckage, they stumble upon a wooden box washed up on the shore. And inside that box they find the dismembered remains of a teenage girl. "I saw her teeth," says one of the boys. "I know she's real—I saw her teeth."
The grisly scene harkens to a spate of disappearances and unsolved murders from decades past. But with the region clawing to recover from nature's wrath, the official investigation is delayed and undermanned. And so private investigator Daniel Riley finds himself commissioned by an enigmatic and troubled young woman to make progress where the police can't—or won't.