Angela Wong's remains are found 14 years after her disappearance, giving authorities the evidence needed to arrest Calvin James.

Geo testifies against Calvin at his murder trial and agrees to a five-year prison sentence for covering up Angela's death.

Geo is sexually assaulted by her bunkmate Bernadette on her third night in prison.

Geo enters a protection partnership with Ella Frank, laundering drug money through coded phone calls in exchange for her safety.

Kaiser visits Geo in prison and warns her that Calvin has escaped from custody, killing two people who helped him.

A dismembered young woman and a strangled toddler are discovered buried near Geo's childhood home, echoing Angela's murder.

Geo is released from prison and returns to her father's house to find the word 'MURDERER' spray-painted across the garage door.

A flashback reveals Calvin raping Angela at his apartment while Geo was passed out; he strangles Angela when she threatens to call the police.

A flashback shows Calvin manipulating and threatening Geo into helping him bury Angela's body in the woods behind her childhood home.

Two more bodies are found near the local high school: a dismembered woman and a young girl with a lipstick heart and the words 'SEE ME' on her chest.

Kaiser realizes that Geo missed half of their junior year because she was pregnant after Calvin raped her.

Geo reads all of Dominic's letters and discovers her son endured neglect, abuse, and years in the foster system after his adoptive family fell apart.

Dominic reveals knowledge of an unpublished detail about the lipstick hearts, exposing himself as the true killer and attacking Geo.

Calvin breaks into Geo's house and rips Dominic off her as Dominic attempts to rape and kill her.

Geo retrieves a hidden gun and shoots both Dominic and Calvin dead; she later finds peace as Kaiser's partner, expecting their child.

Fourteen years after Angela Wong's disappearance, her remains are found and Geo Shaw testifies at Calvin James's murder trial, accepting a five-year prison sentence for covering up the crime. In prison, Geo is assaulted and forges a dangerous protection deal with drug lord Ella Frank to survive. Meanwhile, new murders emerge near Geo's childhood home just before her release, pulling her and detective Kaiser Brody back into Calvin's orbit. Flashbacks reveal the full horror of Angela's death: Calvin's assault on her, his strangling her to silence her, and his manipulation of Geo into helping bury the body. After Geo is released, the killer strikes again, and Kaiser's startling realization about Geo's past opens a new dimension to the case. The truth converges in Geo's childhood bedroom, where she faces both the son she gave up and the man who destroyed her youth, and ends the threat with fatal finality.

The headline events from trial to final reckoning.

As Geo leaves the courtroom after testifying, Calvin slips her a note reading 'you're welcome' written inside a hand-drawn heart.

Geo calls her ex-fiancé Andrew from prison; his assistant says he will never speak to her and she should not call again.

Bernadette is found dead on the same day Geo accepts Ella Frank's offer of protection.

Kaiser pays a prison guard to send him monthly reports on every aspect of Geo's activities, correspondence, and phone calls.

Toddler Henry Bowen's adoptive parents identify his body and confirm the unidentified murdered woman is his birth mother, Claire Toliver.

The lipstick used to draw a heart on Henry's chest is identified as a Shipp Pharmaceuticals shade called Cinnamon Heart.

Kaiser traces ten letters sent to Geo under fictional superhero names to a teenager named Dominic doing a social studies project on prison life.

A flashback shows 16-year-old Geo meeting Calvin in a 7-Eleven parking lot and falling hard for him after he pays her more attention than Angela.

A flashback shows Calvin's controlling behavior causing Geo to miss so many cheerleading practices that Angela kicks her off the squad.

Geo's bank denies her home loan application because of her criminal record; neighbor Roberta Heller throws coffee in Geo's face outside her father's house.

Geo and Kaiser sleep together after she learns that Henry Bowen was Calvin's biological child.

Kaiser visits Sasha Robinson's grandmother, who identifies Calvin as Emily's father and mentions a young man who came asking about Sasha and the adoption agency.

A flashback shows Calvin being sentenced to four consecutive life sentences; he tells Kaiser that people like him should not exist.

Geo contacts Dominic on Facebook and invites him over; when he steps out of his truck, she briefly and viscerally mistakes him for a young Calvin.

Geo has Dominic buried in the family plot beside her mother, choosing to give him in death the love and peace she could never give him in life.

While the main plot charges forward, a web of secondary events gives the story its depth and texture. Calvin's chilling courtroom note and Andrew's cold rejection establish Geo's total isolation at the start of her sentence, while Kaiser quietly builds a surveillance file on her for five years. The police investigation into the new murders follows its own trail of clues: a distinctive lipstick shade, a string of letters with superhero signatures, and interviews that slowly reveal Calvin's connection to the victims. Flashbacks fill in the history of Geo's relationship with Calvin, showing how his charm turned to control and how he drove a wedge between Geo and Angela. After Geo's release, her daily humiliations and her unexpected closeness with Kaiser run alongside a mounting body count that Kaiser's interviews are only beginning to untangle. The pool closes on the aftermath, as Geo makes a final act of love for the son she never knew.

The supporting moments, investigations, and relationships that shaped the story.

Kaiser visits Geo in her prison cell after the trial and tells her he hated her when he first learned the truth but no longer does.

Geo is assigned to maximum-security housing and given her preferred job working in the prison salon.

Geo befriends Cat Bonaducci in prison, her first real female friendship since Angela's death.

Geo begins a sexual relationship with a young corrections officer, trading intimacy for small comforts that make prison life survivable.

A flashback shows Calvin being apprehended just before crossing the Canadian border; he remains calm and arrogant throughout Kaiser's interrogation.

A flashback shows Geo and Angela leaving a high school party together after Kaiser kisses Geo and tells her he wants to be with her.

Kaiser shows Geo security footage of a man purchasing the Cinnamon Heart lipstick; Geo recognizes the figure as Calvin.

Kim tells Kaiser the new murders do not match Calvin's established patterns and urges him to seriously consider a different suspect.

A flashback reveals that on the night Geo resolved to confess everything, Calvin climbed through her bedroom window, raped her, and then fled town.

A flashback reveals Geo took over dismembering Angela's body in the woods after Calvin could not bring himself to finish the task.

Geo visits her mother's and Angela's grave sites at Rose Hill Cemetery in the days after her release from prison.

Dominic confronts Geo in her childhood bedroom and tells her that what she did was not a mistake but a reflection of her character.

Ella calls Geo from prison to tell her that Cat died the previous night; Geo mourns having lost her third and final close female friend.

Calvin tells Geo he returned to Sweetbay because the dismemberments in the new murders were a signal only he and she could have understood.

Pregnant with Kaiser's child and free of the guilt she has carried since age 16, Geo finds that her happiness finally outweighs her grief.

Beneath the surface of the main narrative runs a current of pivotal revelations that quietly reshape the meaning of every event. Kaiser's forgiveness in Geo's prison cell plants the first seed of her eventual healing, while Geo's survival strategies — including her friendship with Cat and a transactional relationship with a guard — reveal how deeply she has learned to compartmentalize. Flashbacks expose the full arc of Calvin's manipulation: his calculated seduction of a 16-year-old, his exploitation of a drunken party, and his final act of rape before abandoning Geo to carry his secret alone. A late and shocking flashback reveals that it was Geo, not Calvin, who took over dismembering Angela's body — the hidden truth she never shared in court. Kim's professional skepticism, Calvin's explanation for his return, and Dominic's rage-filled accusations in the bedroom each force Geo and the reader to reexamine what they thought they knew. The pool closes on the emotional resolution that has been building across the entire novel: Geo finally stepping out of grief and into the light.