John Ray Leenders, the brutal man who tried to rape Sherri Travis when she was thirteen, is back in Jacaranda, living with the single mother of a teenage daughter. Sherri does not want to get involved and tries hard to ignore what she sees happening to Lacey, but it's impossible to look away. Then Sherri's father, Tully Jenkins, also reappears in her life, dragging Sherri deep into the swamp in search of alligator poachers.