Two teenage girls are abducted—one returns, and the other does not.
On the night they vanish, high school seniors Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are attending a beach party in Emerson Bay, a small town in North Carolina. Despite a massive police search, hope fades until Megan manages to escape from a bunker deep in the woods. A year later, Megan’s bestselling account of her ordeal turns her into a celebrity, but there’s an inconvenient truth: Nicole is still missing.
Livia, Nicole’s older sister and a forensic pathology fellow, anticipates the eventual discovery of Nicole’s body and the resolution of her sister’s fate. Unexpectedly, the first lead comes from another body, that of a young man linked to Nicole’s past. Seeking answers about that ominous night, Livia contacts Megan, suspecting a connection to other missing girls.
Megan harbors more information than she disclosed in her book, with fragments of memory hinting at something more horrifying than her initial narrative. As Megan and Livia delve deeper into the investigation, they realize that the true terror may lie in uncovering precisely what they have been searching for.