Special Agent David Roberts is a top FBI profiler, focusing on violent offenders. His professional life is extraordinarily successful--but his personal life is in tatters. At the end of a difficult case, he finds himself with a unique opportunity: the chance to revisit his past and make up for the mistakes of youth.
Twenty years earlier, David was an awkward and bullied teenager living in a small Arkansas town called Grayson and suffering from unrequited love. Now, when a string of grisly and horrific homicides hits Grayson, David is ordered--against his will--to return to his hated hometown and investigate the crimes. As he searches for the killer, he encounters former schoolmates and peers, as well as Emily Anderson, the object of his teenage love, a woman he has never forgotten. David and Emily connect, and he begins to see that empathy and compassion should overcome the bitterness that has lived in his heart for so many years. But then the killer strikes much closer to home, leaving David not only questioning his career, choices and life, but also fearing for the lives of those he loves.
In this thriller, a gifted but flawed FBI agent faces the demons of his past while searching for a serial killer at large in his hometown.