When private investigator Tabitha Jordan arrives in a quiet town to find a missing girl, she expects resistance-maybe even danger. She doesn't expect a town with no children, a shuttered school, and whispers of a creature the locals only call the child eater.

The deeper Tabitha digs, the stranger the case becomes. A decades-old disappearance mirrors the current one. A wildflower patch grows where nothing else will. And the abandoned house tied to both children feels disturbingly lived-in. As shadows close in, Tabitha and contractor David Matherson are drawn into a mystery that stretches back generations and straight into the woods the town fears.

When another attack leaves David gravely injured, Tabitha refuses to abandon him. Together, they descend into a hidden cavern where the truth waits in the dark...along with something hungry. What they find forces Tabitha to confront not only the monster stalking the town, but the ghosts of her own childhood trauma.