Pleasure and Prey

Being kidnapped at 12 years old by my stepfather means even the campground where I work and live is never truly safe from my anxiety. If it wasn’t for my dogs, I’d fall apart completely. But then Virgil comes into my life. The masked stalker slides into my room at night and takes what he pleases, making sure I enjoy every second of it. What starts as a fantasy soon becomes something inescapable for us both.

Nothing bad happens at summer camp. That’s what my fellow camp counselors have convinced me of when the nights around the lake get a little eerie. But when the kids all go home and the counselors throw a party on our last night at Camp Clearwater, things change. None of us could have suspected that there was a stranger watching us, or that our machete-wielding visitor doesn’t seem to like that we’re here. But when I'm attacked in the woods, he unexpectedly comes to my rescue in the most ruthless way.

When the stranger who got me out of a mess in Springwood turns the town into a slaughterhouse in my name, I do the only thing I can do. I run. Not far enough, though, because I can feel him in Akron, looking for me. But he wants to take me home, and I can’t go back. Not after what he did. Especially when I know that more than anything, he wants me home with him. But when his words betray how he really feels, instead of violence from the monster of Springwood I get something completely different. Will I be tricked into going home after all?

When I'm confronted in the woods by a man with a chainsaw and a gorgeous face, I should’ve known it would end poorly. But when I end up in the killer’s house instead of chopped into little pieces, I don’t know what to think. Not when he promises me that he won’t hurt me, and especially when he tells me that I can’t leave. Not unless he can trust me. He can’t, of course. I’ll tell anyone that will listen that this monster cut up some man in the moonlight, even if he promises that it had been deserved. He’s lying, because there’s no way anyone deserves what he did.

Fifteen years ago, Cassian Byers murdered his older sister. And I witnessed the whole thing. For years, I’ve fought to bury the memories of my troubled childhood, which includes the haunting image of my babysitter’s murder. Life in Hayden Fields has been eerily calm—no big crimes or chaos—until now.