When Corey Breininger was a child, his stepmother, Judith Hawkey, coerced him into doing something horrible. Tormented by guilt, he kept her deadly secret for years. Knowing what she was capable of, how could he ever tell the truth and hope to survive?

On the mornings when Joylynn Martinez couldn't remember the night before, she always told herself that she must have had too much to drink. She never suspected that her own husband, Robert Howard Bruce, was responsible or that he was just getting started.