Keeper of the Dead — Jaylynn Wylie

Detective Rena Foss was hit hard by a tough case that left her feeling less like a cop than the keeper of dead children's memories. She abandoned her fast-tracked career in Minneapolis for the promise of light caseloads and little supervision in rural Nevada. She soon discovers there are monsters hunting children everywhere when a star athlete turns up missing. Her victim, Kammy Johnson, is the perfect kid on the surface: smart, attractive, likeable, and talented.

When Rena starts digging, she realizes the girl has been playing a dangerous game involving blackmail and manipulation that might end with her dead. When the kidnapper contacts the parents, she knows the chances of getting the girl back alive are slim to none. A second fresh-faced teenager is taken, and Rena fears she will have to make room for even more dead children in the part of her soul that secretly dies with them.

The bodies of the girls start turning up with no leads to point them in the direction of their killer. Her partner and lover's daughter is taken, and Rena no longer cares about justice or the law; she has ticking clock measuring the heartbeats Jocelyn has left. She has to find her because losing a child she knows and loves will effectively destroy her too. Rena knows how to hunt the monsters that prey on children, and if she ignores procedure of the letter of the law, she can bring Jocelyn alive or a least be able to kill the devil that took her.