Maybe because she knows what it’s like to survive something you weren’t supposed to.

Maybe it’s because she’s pathologically incapable of minding her own business. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Rebel figures cats have nine lives, so might as well live every damn one of them.

Either way, when her friend Jami Dowell is murdered at Gilman Academy, Rebel knows one thing for certain.

Jami isn’t the first.

Five years ago, another Gilman coed was murdered.

Now the killer is back.

And this time, Rebel intends to find them.

Enter Cash Cantrell: decorated Marine, Gilman detective, reluctant babysitter to a nineteen-year-old math whiz with zero respect for boundaries and an alarming talent for being exactly where she doesn’t belong.

He wants Rebel out of his investigation.

Highly unlikely. He’d have more luck catching a bullfrog with greased hands than keeping Rebel out of his business.

Gilman isn’t just an elite Southern academy wrapped in old brick, moss-draped magnolias, and generational wealth. Its secret societies have secrets. Its most powerful families remember sins longer than churches remember sinners. And somebody walking around those immaculate grounds has already gotten away with murder.

Twice.

Rebel intends to make damn sure there isn’t a third.

But killers aren’t the only ones who keep secrets in Gilman.

And the closer Rebel gets to the truth, the more she begins to understand that some of Gilman’s secrets were buried long before Jami died.

Some before Rebel was even born.

Some secrets bloom. Some bleed.