When ballet dancer Clara Campbell arrives in New Orleans, lonely and homesick, she is immediately captivated by the story of Windisle Plantation and the tragic tale that is said to have transpired beyond its gate. Legend has it that it is abandoned by all living souls, but to Clara’s great surprise, it is not a ghost she hears through the stone wall surrounding the property, but a flesh and blood man: a scarred stranger with a pain deeper and darker than the churning waters of the Mississippi river that flows beside his self-imposed prison.

I wanted to lose myself in the small town of Pelion, Maine. To forget everything I had left behind. The sound of rain. The blood. The coldness of a gun against my skin. For six months, each breath has been a reminder that I survived—and my dad didn't. I'm almost safe again. But the moment I meet Archer Hale, my entire world tilts on its axis . . . and never rights itself again. Until I trespass into his strange, silent, and isolated world, Archer communicates with no one. Yet in his whiskey-colored eyes, something intangible happens between us.

Travis Hale has it all. An important role as the chief of police in the idyllic town of Pelion, Maine. Looks that regularly and consistently make women fall at his feet. Two nephews and a niece he adores, and a family who’s mostly forgiven him after a series of unfortunate decisions years before. Perhaps his past is riddled with regrets and misguided choices, but his future looks bright and limitless. Until the new guy in town crosses him in a way both shocking and indefensible.

Luke Garrison is a hometown hero, a member of the National Guard ready to deploy again. Strong, sweet, and sexy, he doesn't have a girlfriend and doesn't want one. When the wildly beautiful Harper stumbles into his life, though, he realizes that she's the perfect decoy. A fake girlfriend to keep his family off his back until he's out on another mission.

At 19 years old, college student Josie Stratton was kidnapped by a madman and held shackled for 10 months in an abandoned warehouse before she finally escaped her hellish prison. Eight years later, when the body of a young woman is found chained in the basement of a vacant house, Cincinnati Police Detective Zach Copeland is instantly reminded of the crime committed against Josie Stratton. Zach was just a rookie on the perimeter of that case, but he's never forgotten the traumatized woman with the haunted eyes.