Missing acting students Dylan and Michaela are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. But forensic evidence soon exposes the incident as a hoax, and the kids are charged as criminals themselves. After examining Michaela, psychologist Alex Delaware is certain that there's more to this sordid psychodrama, and his instincs prove dead on when she is savagely murdered. Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and homicide cop Milo Sturgis unearth more questions than answers - and host of eerily identical killings. What bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?