Sheriff Ken Meltzer from the small town of Whisper finds the decomposing body of a girl at the bottom of an embankment deep in the Georgia forest. Next to her, the skeletal remains of another girl. The State crime lab reports tell him one victim had been there for 60 days, the other for ten years. They were both 13, both disappeared on their walk home from school. The first victim disappeared a full year before the lab estimates she was murdered. The second was abducted six months before her naked body was tossed in the woods. Homicide is not Sheriff Meltzer's speciality, but asking the FBI for help would do nothing to put the community at ease. So he calls a friend at the Atlanta Police Department who recommends a freelancer Meltzer has never heard of - former FBI profiler and private detective Keye Street.