He doesn’t just abduct women—he rewrites them.
When Deputy Sara Parker vanishes from a frozen mountain road in the middle of a blizzard, Sylva, North Carolina, refuses to believe she’s gone for good. Her cruiser is found idling. Her radio is dead. Human remains are discovered on Miller’s Ridge—arranged like a warning.
Sheriff Burke Scott calls in Special Agent Tessa Quinn—and pairs her with Deputy Scout Wilson, the rugged mountain deputy who knows every ridge and back road in the county. Scout already failed one woman he was supposed to protect. He will burn the mountain down before he loses another.
Tessa is brilliant, controlled, and used to standing alone. Scout is steady heat and mountain steel. The pull between them is immediate, dangerous, and impossible to ignore. But in these mountains, wanting each other may be the very thing that gets them killed.
Clues lead to Jackson Valley University and the cold case of Lauren Pierce, a young woman quietly erased after crossing powerful men.
Their suspect doesn’t see himself as a killer.
He sees himself as an author.
In a hidden “Writer’s Room,” fear becomes revision—and every page written brings his captives closer to the ending he’s chosen.
When a blizzard slams the ridge, the hunt turns desperate. Trapped high in the Blue Ridge Mountains with a predator who doesn’t run—who waits—Tessa and Scout must fight for each other as fiercely as they fight for the truth.
In Sylva, women don’t just disappear.
They’re rewritten.
And this time, he may have chosen the wrong couple to corner.