As Monongahela County's new coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams gears up for a third day searching for a missing woman, she receives the news she's been dreading: a body has been found. What she discovers at the scene leaves no doubt-the missing woman was violently murdered. Worse, the manner of death mirrors the Monongahela Strangler case that terrorized the county when Zoe was in high school. Those murders stopped, but the case was never satisfactorily solved. And with people arriving in town for Zoe's twentieth high school reunion, the memories of those scary days return with a vengeance.

But Zoe's new husband, Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams, sees the murder differently. His investigation reveals two feuding families and a forbidden relationship between their children. The homicide appears to be a crime of passion until Pete's relentless digging unearths a link between his prime suspect and Zoe's serial killer. Suddenly, with the predator threatening to strike someone near and dear to both Zoe and Pete, they must race to uncover the truth and catch a madman before another innocent victim is brutally murdered.