The First Mistake

Ember Brannon swore she'd never come back.

Years after fleeing the mansion where her mother died and her family fell apart, Ember returns without a plan. Without answers. Not for the town that still whispers about the Brannons. Not even for herself. She just needed somewhere to disappear.

But the house isn't empty.

A doll appears where she didn't leave it. A woman from an old family portrait starts showing up in her dreams. And at night, something moves just beyond the tree line. Watching, waiting.

Ember isn't the only one tangled in it. Her cousin Ryker, steady and protective, has been keeping watch from the cottage out back, but he's hiding something. Luke, the man she left behind, is back in her life with secrets of his own. And Skeet, the town's golden man, smiles a little too wide whenever he says how much he'd love to see her gone.

The deeper Ember digs, the clearer it becomes—something was buried on that property. And someone already dug it up.

Ember came home to escape the past. Now it's coming for her.