A Faint Cold Fear (grant County, #3)

The story is set in a small Georgia county, home to Grant Tech, a technical college whose campus becomes the center of several violent crimes over a single week.

On a Sunday afternoon, Sara Linton, the county coroner and a pediatrician, is eating ice cream with her sister, Tessa, who is nearly eight months pregnant, when her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, the Grant County chief of police, calls her to examine a body found beneath a bridge near campus. Sara brings Tessa along; Tessa heads into the woods while Sara works the scene. The victim is a young man whose fall from the bridge pulverized his leg bones and caused injuries initially suggesting sexual assault, though Sara determines the death is consistent with a high fall. She notes a suspicious scrape on his back and a scar from a previous suicide attempt. Frank Wallace, Jeffrey's second in command, finds a suicide note on the bridge, which also bears racist graffiti including a swastika.

Chuck Gaines, the campus security director, arrives with Lena Adams, a former detective under Jeffrey who left the force after he ordered her to see a therapist. Chuck identifies the victim as Andy Rosen. Despite the suicide note and prior attempt, Sara privately tells Jeffrey something about the death does not feel right.

When Tessa fails to return, Sara follows the trail, marking her path by drawing an arrow in the dirt with her heel. She discovers Tessa stabbed multiple times, a piece of white plastic clutched in her hand. Lena spots the attacker behind a tree and chases him but loses him. A helicopter airlifts Tessa and Sara to Grady Hospital in Atlanta. A patrolman reveals Tessa had been collecting litter in a plastic bag, and Jeffrey deduces the attacker stole it because Tessa found something incriminating. Jeffrey also finds Andy's silver Star of David necklace in the nearby woods.

Jeffrey sends Lena to notify Andy's mother, Jill Rosen, a therapist at the counseling center. Lena's backstory emerges: She was kidnapped and raped over a year ago by the man who murdered her twin sister, Sibyl. Though she resigned rather than comply with Jeffrey's therapy order, she secretly attended sessions with Rosen. When Rosen instinctively grabs Lena's scarred hands upon learning of Andy's death, Lena has a panic attack.

Tessa survives surgery, but the baby is lost. When Tessa wakes, her only request is a whispered "Find him." Sara's parents blame her for bringing Tessa to the scene, and Jeffrey reports they have asked him not to come to the hospital, leaving Sara feeling abandoned.

On Monday, Jeffrey interviews Andy's parents. Brian Keller, Andy's biological father, seems eager to share something but falls silent when Jill returns. Jeffrey notices a crude nude painting on Andy's wall depicting a woman with a sunburst navel tattoo. Richard Carter, a biology professor and Sibyl's former teaching assistant, visits and mentions a rumor about Keller having an affair with a student.

Jeffrey then arrives at a sorority house to find Ellen Schaffer, the jogger who discovered Andy's body, dead on a couch with her toe caught in the trigger of her own shotgun. Discrepancies suggest staging: a mismatched shell an experienced shooter would never use, gun-cleaning oil near the window, and an arrow drawn in the dirt outside mirroring Sara's mark in the forest. Frank reports that a fingerprint from Andy's apartment belongs to Lena.

Jeffrey confronts Lena about the fingerprint and underwear found in Andy's room; she denies knowing him. Ethan Green, a student pursuing Lena, intervenes aggressively. At a coffeehouse, Ethan offers to connect Lena with Andy's friends but grabs her wrist so hard he injures it when she tries to leave, revealing a controlling streak. Jeffrey secretly takes Ethan's coffee cup to lift prints.

Sara performs autopsies Monday night. In Schaffer's lung she finds a tooth inhaled before the shotgun blast, proving someone struck Schaffer while she was alive and confirming homicide. Andy's autopsy is inconclusive, but the next day Dan Brock, the mortician, spots a small puncture wound in Andy's scalp consistent with a needle injection. Sara, furious at herself for missing it, confirms Andy was also murdered.

At a rave that evening, Lena, taking Vicodin for her injured wrist, meets Scooter (William Dickson), Andy's closest friend, who has a methamphetamine addiction. Scooter confirms Andy tried to buy drugs to kill himself and reveals that the person who finally sold them was someone Lena works with. Lena realizes he means Chuck. That night, a volatile encounter at her apartment ends with Lena passing out after heavy drinking, then waking beside Ethan and fearing he assaulted her while she was unconscious. They fight before she locks herself in the bathroom.

Jeffrey and Frank kick in Lena's door the next morning, finding both battered. Jeffrey discovers Ethan's real name is Ethan Nathaniel White. His record includes arson, felony assault, and rape; his father is a white-supremacist preacher, and his brother is on death row for killing a Black police officer. Lena refuses to cooperate. That night, Lena discovers drug paraphernalia in a locker at the security office, suggesting it is being used for drug distribution. When she tries to leave, Chuck blocks her and forces her head toward his crotch. She punches him and flees. Later, Ethan pins her at her apartment and has sex with her in a deeply ambiguous encounter.

Wednesday morning, Chuck is found with his throat slashed and Lena's hunting knife under the desk, bearing her bloody fingerprints. Both Lena and Ethan are taken into custody. At the hospital, Sara discovers white-supremacist tattoos covering Ethan's torso and tells Lena she has been raped. Lena insists she "fell." Sara performs the rape kit and confronts Jeffrey about handcuffing a rape victim. During Chuck's autopsy, Sara extracts a broken knife tip from his shoulder blade that does not match Lena's intact blade. The blood on Lena's knife is her own type, not Chuck's. Lena was framed, and Jeffrey releases her.

Nan Thomas, the school librarian and Sibyl's former partner, takes Lena in and gives her a gun for protection. On Thursday, Jeffrey learns from Candy Wayne, secretary to Kevin Blake, the campus dean, that Keller previously worked at a pharmaceutical company and abandoned a first wife and son. Photographs in Andy's apartment confirm the abandoned son grew up to be Richard Carter.

While Lena is alone at Nan's house, Richard breaks in, seeking boxes of Sibyl's research notes. He confesses to being Keller's abandoned firstborn and reveals that Sibyl developed the research behind Keller's potentially lucrative antidepressant. When Andy discovered the stolen research and began blackmailing them, Richard killed Andy by injecting succynilcholine, a drug that causes paralysis and is nearly untraceable after death. He killed Schaffer because she saw his face in the woods and stabbed Tessa because she might have found Andy's Star of David necklace on the hillside. He offers to kill Ethan for Lena, casting it as mutual aid between abuse survivors.

Sensing danger, Lena rams the cast on her injured wrist into Richard's throat and flees to the bedroom. Richard breaks down the door, seizes the gun, and presses the muzzle to Lena's head. He pulls the trigger, but the gun does not fire: Lena had ejected the magazine and never managed to chamber a round with her injured hand. Frank Wallace, who came to check on Lena, hears the struggle and shoots Richard through the window, killing him.

Jeffrey plans to charge Keller with theft of intellectual property and fraud. Sara reconciles with her parents and resists an advance from Mason James, a surgeon and old flame, realizing she still has feelings for Jeffrey. Jeffrey proposes remarriage; Sara does not accept but asks him to come tell Tessa the case is resolved. On Friday, Lena packs her belongings to move in with Nan. She retrieves her real pocketknife from behind the medicine cabinet and finds its blade tip broken off, matching the fragment from Chuck's shoulder blade. Someone stole her knife, used a different weapon to kill Chuck, and planted her other knife at the scene to frame her. The identity of Chuck's real killer remains unresolved.