For FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett, the wedding of one of
their own was cause for celebration. Until a woman
staggered down the aisle, incoherent, emaciated, head
shaved, and wearing only a white nightgown. No one knows
who she is or where she’s come from—or why she’s chosen to
appear in a church filled with law enforcement agents.

Then a fingerprint check determines that the woman has
been missing for nearly eight years—that once she was
someone’s wife, someone’s mother…and a cop. Imprisoning
her in a dark cell, depriving her of any contact with the
outside world, her enigmatic captor was a man she didn’t
know and who seldom spoke, who punished her only when she
failed to follow his most basic instructions designed to
keep her alive.

Cold, businesslike, seemingly indifferent
to his victims, he’s a predator with an M.O. as
terrifyingly inscrutable as any Smoky has ever
encountered. As she fits together the pieces of what
remains of his victim’s fractured life, a chilling picture
emerges of a killer every bit as calculating, masterful,
and professional as Smoky and the team she leads—a
professional psychopath who doesn’t take murder personally
and never makes a mistake. There’s a reason he let one of
his victims go free. And by the time Smoky pierces the
darkness of his twisted mind, it may cost her more than
she can bear to lose to escape. For a trap snapped closed
the moment she took this case too much to heart.