Meg Pearce is haunted by a death that may never be explained, ... and so she can never truly be healed. During the summer before she started college, she and her boyfriend went on a camping trip that ended with one of their friends disappearing. In one fell swoop of destruction, she lost not only a friend but her own innocence, her future, her best friend and lover, her everything.

Seventeen years later, Meg's career as an anthropologist drives her to seek understanding about why things happen and the answers for human behavior. Those questions that torment her have her returning to the same campsite of the tragedy that defined her life. A part of her hopes to solve the mystery that has plagued her for most of her adult years. Ultimately she longs to find a way to deal with the loss. Instead of gaining closure though, she stumbles onto a gruesome discovery that has her reeling back to the darkest time in her existence.

Detective Chad Ingram has spent the last seventeen years attempting to solve a stone-cold mystery—one that also stole his life and his true love.

Death seems supernaturally determined to shake up their lives for good or evil—only this time, Meg and Chad are both in the crossfire.