One year after the disappearance of two high school seniors from the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina, only one has returned. Megan McDonald, now a national celebrity due to her best-selling book recounting her kidnapping, seems to have moved on from the traumatic event. But the other girl, Nicole Cutty, is still missing, leaving her sister Livia, a forensic pathologist in a perpetual state of anxiety and uncertainty. When new evidence emerges linking the disappearance to a series of other missing girls and a body found in Livia's morgue, the two women are drawn together in a quest for the truth. Megan is haunted by scattered memories pointing to darker details she had omitted from her memoir. Together, Megan and Livia embark on a chilling journey to uncover the fate of Nicole, a path that reveals disturbing secrets and leads to harrowing realizations about the monstrous depths of their situation.