ONE OF OUR OWN

Darby Steele is one of a handful of Special Agents assigned to the FBI’s vaunted Behavioral Analysis Unit specializing in analyzing the behavior and motives of serial killers. New to her position, she is relegated to the least import work in the BAU. One day, quite by accident, Darby stumbles across a mysterious file on the cellphone of a missing Department of Defense scientist. Among the cellphone’s contents are candid photographs of twenty-seven women; all victims of the serial killer the media have dubbed, Doctor Sleep.

For over twenty years, Doctor Sleep has been abducting young, attractive women, immobilizing them and surgically removing their faces before fitting them with grotesque paper mache masks, hideous caricatures of their former beauty. But tracking the cellphone’s owner proves more difficult than Darby could ever imagine.

Her most promising lead is the missing scientist’s childhood friend, who is currently serving a life sentence in the Supermax prison facility in Florence, Colorado. A meeting with the prisoner only serves to deepen the mystery. Is the missing scientist the infamous Doctor Sleep, or just a pawn Sleep has sacrificed to obscure his identity? Thwarted at every turn, Darby suspects someone is observing her every move, enticing her with clues that lead nowhere. Discovering the truth will lead her down a path that could not only end her career, but also her life.