Opening
Three women cross paths with the same charming predator—and wake to a new reality as ghosts. Across staggered timelines, their deaths reveal a calculated pattern of luring, isolation, and violence, while their grief and fury begin to bend the living world. The “Ask for Andrea” safety code hangs over the story like a warning the system can’t enforce.
What Happens
Chapter 1: MEGHAN
The novel opens one year before the present with Meghan lying in the Oquirrh Mountains, strangled by her own scarf by a man she calls “Jimmy.” He is handsome—Chris Hemsworth handsome—with a distinctive cheek mole and a spotless blue Kia Sorento. When he leaves her for dead, she rises and runs, only to realize she isn’t winded because she isn’t breathing. She’s dead. She’s a ghost.
Her memory jumps back to their MatchStrike date at Gracie’s Spot, where everything feels right, even perfect—“a needle in a deep haystack.” She cancels her pre-arranged safety call to her friend Sharesa. In the bathroom she notices a sign: “Ask for Andrea at the bar. We’ll make sure you get home safe.” She believes she doesn’t need it. The next clear image is his warm amber eyes turning cold with rage in the car as he offers her a ride home—a gentle performance that becomes a death sentence. Back in the mountains, the “Ask for Andrea” sign pulses in her mind, a promise that can’t reach her now.
Chapter 2: BRECIA
Two years before the present, Brecia Collier hovers over her own body in the side yard of her Boulder, Colorado home. She recognizes her killer: a man she briefly dated after meeting him on MatchStrike. The mole is the same, partly obscured by a “Joaquin Phoenix beard.” He strangled her with an extension cord. She recalls his charm curdling into possessiveness—anger over a “one-week anniversary” she spent with friends, followed by a flood of texts that shift from apology to abuse. She blocked him and moved on. He didn’t.
Her spirit learns fast. She’s intangible but can follow him—so she climbs into his blue Kia and commits to haunting him, leaning into Vengeance and Post-Mortem Justice. At a suburban house, she discovers his double life: a wife, April Carson, and two young daughters, Emma and Kimmie Carson. It’s a gut-punch revelation of Deception and Duality. Animals sense her; a dog bristles, a cat listens. She slips through fence slats and a cat door, and in the garage, a burst of grief for her own cat, Frank, coincides with a lightbulb popping. Emotion, she realizes, might be power in this strange state of Afterlife and Sisterhood.
Chapter 3: SKYE
In the present day (NOW) in Kuna, Idaho, Skye, a shy barista, serves a handsome regular she and her manager, Ken, call “the hot chocolate dude that looks like Chris Hemsworth.” He’s James Carson, and after a summer of flirting, he offers Skye a ride on her last day before college. She says yes, relieved to get a second chance after missing her shot to give him her number. He suggests food at “Moe’s”—out of the way, but worth it.
Driving toward Blacks Creek, her nerves prick. His smile starts to feel rehearsed. When her phone loses service and she can’t text her mom, he promises reception “just over the next hill.” He turns down a deserted dirt road. Skye steps out to find a signal. He attacks from behind and strangles her. She watches, horrified and weightless, as her spirit separates from her body and her killer deposits her in the dust. She swings at him with ghost fists that pass through air. He drives away. She stays—alone with the impossible.
Chapter 4: MEGHAN
A year before the present, Meghan wanders the forest, terrified. Death hasn’t erased her fear of the dark, or the coyotes’ calls. Drawn back to her body by growls, she finds a pack scavenging the remains—her leg torn, her stomach torn open. Rage swallows terror.
She screams at the animals. They stop and stare, the lead coyote baring its teeth, uneasy. Meghan steps forward, keeps screaming, reaches toward it. The leader barks and bolts; the others follow. Alone in the growing light, Meghan sits with what’s left of her body and the brutal fact of her death. Like Brecia, she can touch the world—especially animals—through focused will.
Chapter 5: BRECIA
Two years before the present, Brecia spends three days haunting James’s home, learning April’s routines and the girls’ names. Her initial hatred for April thins into pity; the wife is duped, not complicit. Only the family cat, Oscar, seems to share Brecia’s loathing of James. Boxes appear—plans to move to Herriman, Utah.
In the basement office, she watches his ritual. He shaves the beard he grew to alter his look, opens an incognito browser, and logs onto MatchStrike as “Jamie Carver.” He juggles four women at once, recycling flirty lines, then checks the news for updates on Brecia’s murder with chilling calm. The police have no leads. When he schedules a date with a woman named Nicole, Brecia’s fury spikes—white-hot. His computer screen snaps dark with a soft pop. Her emotions can break things. Justice might yet be possible.
Character Development
The opening arc builds three distinct victims while steadily revealing the killer’s method and mask. Their post-mortem awakenings trace a path from confusion to resolve, hinting that grief and rage are power sources in their new state.
- James Carson: A meticulous predator who curates charm as a weapon. He shifts names, looks, and routines (beard/no beard; “Jimmy,” “Jamie Carver”) to hunt with minimal risk, compartmentalizing family life and violence without remorse.
- Meghan: Warm, trusting, and eager for connection. Death forces her into raw self-protection; her stand against the coyotes marks the first emergence of purposeful, outward-directed force.
- Brecia: Independent and boundary-setting in life; relentless in death. She pivots fastest to strategy—tailing James, testing limits, and discovering emotional discharge as power—while developing empathy for April.
- Skye: Hopeful and shy, on the verge of a new life. She reads the performance too late but recognizes it, underscoring her instincts—and the predator’s advantage.
- April Carson: Quiet and observant, living inside a lie she didn’t choose. Her presence deepens the story’s moral stakes and the scale of deception.
Themes & Symbols
The novel centers Predation and Violence Against Women, presenting a pattern: a killer who weaponizes normalcy—handsomeness, politeness, family photos, and app banter—to secure access and privacy before he attacks. The non-linear structure makes the pattern unmistakable, putting readers ahead of the characters and intensifying dread.
Deception and dual lives drive the engine of harm. The family home, incognito windows, aliases, and the clean blue Kia form a camouflage system designed to produce trust, isolate targets, and erase evidence. Against this, the afterlife reframes power: grief, fear, and fury become kinetic. The story seeds an emergent sisterhood—separate voices moving toward shared purpose—pointing toward a collective strategy rather than solitary revenge.
Symbols reinforce the tension between safety and façade. The “Ask for Andrea” sign embodies a well-meant but limited net: protection that relies on visible danger and voluntary self-advocacy—both neutralized by a predator’s performance. The blue Kia Sorento is the mobile trap, the hinge between flirtation and assault. A popped lightbulb and a scattered pack of coyotes mark the ghosts’ emotion-to-action threshold—the first proof that their will can still land.
Key Quotes
“Ask for Andrea at the bar. We’ll make sure you get home safe.” This line frames the novel’s irony. Safety plans work when danger looks like danger; here, the predator thrives by counterfeiting safety, exposing the gap between policy and reality.
“A needle in a deep haystack.” Meghan’s hope sets up the emotional whiplash of betrayal. The phrase captures why the killer’s persona works: it feels like fate, so red flags feel like overreactions.
“You’ll get service just over the next hill.” James weaponizes reassurance to extend isolation by minutes—long enough to choose terrain and timing. The line distills his method: soothe, delay, control.
“Jamie Carver.” The alias is both mask and method. It shows his comfort with role-play and the modular nature of his predation—new names, same script.
“White-hot” fury. Brecia’s anger doesn’t just describe emotion; it conducts energy. The popped screen turns rage into force, previewing how emotion might become leverage for justice.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters establish the novel’s hybrid engine: a crime story propelled by a supernatural counterforce. By revealing the pattern across “2 YEARS BEFORE,” “1 YEAR BEFORE,” and “NOW,” the narrative arms readers with knowledge the characters lack, sharpening urgency as the women begin to find one another and test their limits. The “Ask for Andrea” motif anchors the book’s social critique—systems that place the burden of safety on targets—while the ghosts’ growing power reframes the central question from who did it to how they can stop him. This foundation readies the convergence of voices, the escalation of emotional power into action, and a fight to turn haunting into rescue.