Eve Renner, a psychology student, finds herself the ultimate target of a serial killer who brutally slashes and tattoos his victims. Eve Renner psychology student and daughter of a retired psychiatrist, finds herself at the center of a series of murders who knows she must find the killer before he gets to her. The story begins with Eve getting a phone call from a disturbed friend in the middle of the night who asks her to meet him to see some "evidence" he has. Though she has no idea what he's talking about, she goes, over the objections of Cole, her fiance. When she arrives at the swamp cabin where Roy says to meet her, she finds him with his throat slashed and a tattoo of numbers on hiis forehead. The killer is still there and she is shot and her only memory is of seeing Cole in the window with a gun.
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While she recuperates at her brother's house, Cole is working to obtain his release and on the day Eve gets home, he achieves it. But Eve has the feeling she is being followed and she finds newspaper clippings about a woman who died at the psychiatric sanitarium that her father worked at, and where she used to play.
As murder after murder mount, all signs point to the long closed Our Lady of Virtues sanitarium as all of the victims, including her father, are somehow related to the institution. Cole weasels his way back into Eve's life, insisting he was set up for the murder of Roy, and he is a suspect in the murder of her father. He received a phone call from him shortly before his death and upon arriving at his home, finds him dead like all the others.
For the rest of the story, Eve tries to piece together her memories of the now-spooky abandoned asylum, and the people her were treated there. Her investigation takes her into the old asylum where the memories of her childhood come back in spades. Searching through the files, she finds one on Faith Chastain, the patient that the clippings were about. It brings forth more questions as she was adopted, and the police discover that Chasstain had a baby at the asylum. When two of the nuns who used to run the place are murdered in the same horrible fashion, the police join in searching for the answers to the adoption question, accept that Cole was likely not the one who shot Eve, and they join together to find out the killer's identity and what drives him, before he reaches Eve, his ultimate goal.
Best part of story, including ending:
You never really knew who the killer was and the memories she had of playing at the asylum were interesting, because now she begins to look differently at the people who were there, including the one weird kid that gave her the shudders.
Best scene in story:
My favorite scene was when she takes Cole to see a doll she found in the attic that she used to play with, and she finds it's slashed with her name on the back and 3 numbers written in blood.
Opinion about the main character:
She is willing to put aside her fear of Cole and let him help her even though she still isn't sure that he wasn't the one who shot her. But she trusts her instincts and that is what makes her a good heroine.
