'Stay in the world, Aud . . . Stay alive inside. Promise me.' Raw with grief, Aud Torvingen has retreated from her life in Atlanta to rebuild a remote cabin in the middle of Appalachia. Her solitude is broken when an old friend asks for her help tracking down his missing fiancée, Tammy. Aud feels obliged to help-and first in New York, and then Arkansas, she finds herself up against a sociopath so artful that the law can't touch him, and her own demons.