Partnered now for two years, Portland Police Detectives Carly Sagan and Joe Avery head to a child refuge named Safe Harbor for their next case. The center is owned by wealthy Olivia Wyatt, while Julia Thorpe handles the administration of the center and Olivia's foundation. A woman's strangled dead body is found on the center's grounds, with a crudely painted satanic drawing next to the body. The detectives will eventually learn the woman was a former Safe Harbor resident whose life did not take a turn for the better after she left the center. Hers will only be the first of several murdered females, all strangled, all found on the Safe Harbor grounds, all with a connection to Safe Harbor, and all with the same crudely painted satanic figure next to the body. Although they consider each other friends, it isn't until this case that Carly divulges to Joe that she was a former resident of Safe Harbor herself, from age twelve to sixteen, as her abusive father murdered her mother before her eyes when she was a child. This case marks Carly's first time back to Safe Harbor since she lived there, it a time in her life she wanted put behind her despite loving Olivia like a mother. Carly also ends up being reunited with Olivia's son, Sam Wyatt, the two who were close friends at the time with the possibility of more. The belief all concerned have is that the murderer is Ray Oakum, the center's former groundskeeper who Olivia and Julia recently fired when it was discovered he was previously imprisoned for sexual predation, his current whereabouts unknown. As Joe and Carly work through the case, Carly will have to battle her family demons, and stay impartial to the evidence as she may go down some paths she may not want to based on her history with Safe Harbor.