Wallace Lake, Ohio, takes care of their own. Unwelcoming of outsiders, the community closes ranks when four women are found murdered along the water’s edge. Agent Luce Hansen of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation must find a way in before another woman loses her life to the ruthless serial killer.

With the help of her new team—a hot rookie and a smart, beautiful medical examiner—Luce uncovers a ring of devotion surrounding the prime suspect. As Luce works to unearth the dark secrets of this close-knit town, she learns to what extraordinary lengths people will go to protect the ones they love. And when Luce feels forsaken, both professionally and personally, she must regain trust in her most valuable investigative tool: herself.

Meredith Doench teaches writing at a university in southern Ohio. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Lumina, and Gertrude. She served as a fiction editor at Camera Obscura: Journal of Literature and Photography and her first crime thriller, Crossed, was published by Bold Strokes Books in August 2015. Her second, Forsaken Trust will be released in early 2017.