AFTER HELPING TO CATCH A SERIAL KILLER last spring, Nearly Boswell isn't looking for her internship in a crime lab to be anything more than an edge on her college applications. She's determined to get out of Sunny View trailer park and prove to herself that she's nothing like her con man father.

But on her first day, a girl from the trailer park turns up dead and an old ally of Nearly's calls in a debt that could jeopardize her future. Then the corpse of a missing person is discovered, buried on a local golf course - and there's a message for Nearly etched into its bones.

Could the corpse be her father, who went missing five years ago? Or is her father a murderer?

As a series of violent crimes with cryptic messages strike a little too close to home, her friends think she's being paranoid. And Reece, her recklessly confident boyfriend, is preoccupied with a new girl as part of his informant work with the police.

Nearly's going to have to risk her future in order to discover the truth about her past in time to stop a killer before he strikes again. And she might have to do it alone.