5James Patterson meets Nicholas Sparks in this suspense novel that intertwines danger and romance along South Carolina's steamy coast. No baggage, that's Becca Noble's battle cry as she hurries through Boston's Logan Airport, leaving her lover/writing professor standing at the gate and stepping into a new life, propelled forward by her newly-minted MFA. Meeting her mother in Islip, Becca's routine trip across Long Island turns into a series of murky dreams and fuzzy memories. A car crash she can't remember has left her mother, Allison, dead and Becca bruised and unconscious. A year later Becca begins a series of dreams dominated by a ghostly, but strangely familiar figure.
The figure is familiar; it's her father's new wife, Sally. She works for Michael's hedge fund and wants Michael for herself. An affair begins, followed by some creative client accounting, both discovered by Allison.
Allison threatens to report both Michael and Sally to the SEC if the affair isn't ended and Sally leaves. Sally's the wrong person to threaten. Unknown to Michael, she kills Allison in a staged car accident only to discover that Becca was a passenger and witnessed the murder she can't remember.
With the dream becoming dangerously clear, Becca must be eliminated and Sally puts her Special Ops training to good use as she stalks Becca with the same cool detachment she perfected hunting Taliban targets in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush Mountains. Sally traps Becca on isolated Tubman Island where they play a desperate game of hide and seek that can have only one winner.