The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Divorced from a verbally abusive man, Mary Hanson goes on her first date in years, with a man she met through a dating service.

A lovely evening culminates with a toe-curling kiss that fills her with hope. .

. Until the middle of the night when a rapist breaks into her apartment-a masked man who smells like her date's aftershave and knows things she has only told him.

Frantic, she flees to the home of her friends, James and his girlfriend Carrie. But no place-not even James's secluded house in the backwoods of Virginia-is truly safe, as Mary's rapist turns out to be a stalker, intent on possessing her, no matter what it takes.

And James has neglected to tell her that his house is also occupied by the ghost of their mutual friend, who was murdered there. While trying to identify the rapist, James struggles with his own legacy from their friend's murder.

. .

has he become an overprotective and controlling jerk? And as the rapist escalates, James is forced to face another horror. Has he put Carrie and her teenage boy-whom he's begun to think of as a son-in danger as well?.