GONE

"It's time for you to go be who you are, or the next time something happens, you won't be any help to any of us."

Two months ago, the unthinkable happened. Ham's family was attacked, pulling her back to the wilds of Idaho from her life on the opposite end of the country. A return trip that saw her do whatever was necessary to protect them, culminating not just with the removal of the threat, but in the destruction of the only home she - or the many young girls who now live there - have ever known.

Forced on the run across state lines, the time since has been spent slowly rebuilding. A process Ham has willingly engaged in, consciously putting the growing restlessness within her at arm's length. A calling from both the life she had built and the skills she worked so hard to attain.

A second self-imposed exile that ends with her handler reaching out. Contact he wouldn't normally dare make, if not for the extreme nature of a new case he knew would speak to her personally, paralleling something they both witnessed during their time in the military together.

Seven hundred miles away, a vicious attack known as an annihilation has taken place. A coordinated strike, encompassing three different sites, all aimed at a particular family. Three generations of an agricultural dynasty completely wiped from the earth in a single night.

The event completely upends the small community where they reside and draws Ham into a much different role than what she's accustomed to. A partnership with local law enforcement that takes her from the small towns dotting the western half of Oregon to the capital city of Portland seeking the people and reasons behind such an attack.

A search that eventually becomes a hunt, at long last letting the true nature kept bottled for months rise back to the surface...