21-year-old Dr Essie Openwaters begins her journey from Stanford University where she earned PhDs in chemical engineering and earth sciences to a national laboratory in the Pacific Northwest where she will soon start her dream job as a research scientist. Essie doesn't know that a man following her is Griff Duncan, a serial rapist/murderer who selected her as his target and will not quit until she is his. Essie quickly learns that survival outside the university is a new world she must quickly adapt to or die.