- A case is reopened into Hailey's fiancé's murder back in her college days. The disappearance of a fellow student working at the college paper may be connected to the murder.
- Emotionally ready to confront her fiancé's 15-year-old murder, Hailey finds herself caught up in the case of a missing college coed. The deeper Hailey digs into the young woman's disappearance the more she is convinced the two events are related.
- A dark-haired college-aged girl is being chased through the dark woods, falls, and turns to face her attacker. She tells him that his scare tactics won't work on her and if the university won't publish her story, she will find a paper who will. The attacker attempts to choke her to death and with her last breath, she tells him that he won't be able to shut her up, she already told Hailey everything.
Hailey Dean, former prosecutor-turned-psychologist, tells her office mate that her life is good and that years after her fiancé Will's murder, she is finally emotionally and mentally ready to reopen and tackle his cold case. Hailey brings Will's brother Danny, who is now a police officer, to the scene of the murder to relive the events of that night. They walk from the fancy restaurant where she had dinner with Will to his "secret" parking spot. She recalls that Will did not recognize the shooter and wrestled the gun pointed at her towards himself and was shot. Although Hailey and Danny's walk-through did not elicit any new evidence, they now have a new perspective and are optimistic that they can put this case to rest. It was not a simple robbery like they had originally thought but a targeted killing where she was in fact the target.
Hailey sees that a murder board has been set up for her at the department. A sketch of the shooter, now hanging on the board, has been run through the system multiple times with no hits so they plan to age the sketch and run it through the system again. The investigation back then was thorough so they basically have no leads. Danny tells her that now that they know she was the target, she should try to jog her memories to find a reason why someone wanted her dead. They agree to review all the evidence and re-interview people.
While going through a box of memories with college friend Clyde, she finds the photo of a woman and asks Clyde if he remembers Emma. (Emma is the woman that was running through the woods in the first scene.) Hailey remarks that the lake house was where they announced their engagement and the last time she saw Emma. She lost track of her because a few days later, Will was killed. They recall that she left for a job in France in the middle of her senior year.
Nancy Grace makes a cameo in a news clip about the cold case being reopened. Hailey decides to find Emma. Efforts to reconnect with Emma fail because Emma has no recent digital footprint at all which Hailey finds curious in this day and age. She discusses the case with Fincher and he helps her locate Emma's half-sister, Olivia. Olivia, although not close to Emma, had hired a private detective to locate Emma in France to no avail. Olivia's last connection to Emma was an email from her stating her intent to move to France for a new job. Fincher finds out later that Emma has never even used her passport.
Hailey meets up with another college friend Brad, Emma's boyfriend at the time. He mentions having a fight with Emma at the lake house over Emma's suspicions that Vivian, now his wife, had designs on him. Emma refused to let him drive her home and he never saw her again. Later on, Vivian makes it clear to Hailey that she did not like Emma and that she was glad Emma took off. Vivian remarks that Emma only cared about leads for big stories at the school newspaper.
Clyde fails to persuade Hailey that her conclusion that she was the target was probably wrong. He offers to post on their reunion website requesting any leads on Emma's whereabouts. Brad manages to find Emma's private online profile page. Hailey's genius hacker cousin Ethan figures out the page is fake and edited to look like it was created much earlier. Hailey manages to find out that the story Emma had been working on was quashed by the editor Tom at the request of the university president. They meet Judith who was Emma's rival and author of an article about the student center. She also received the prestigious newspaper internship meant for Emma. Upon seeing the sketch of Will's killer, she identifies him as the 'cousin' who had packed Emma's things for the France move.
They find Emma's old research on the construction of the student center. It revealed that there were multiple payouts, including one to the university president, bribing him to choose Brad's family company's bid ultimately leading them to enjoy huge profits. Monty decides to have a forensic accountant make sense of their complicated financials related to the student center, including the bribes. Multi-layered shell company connections made it hard to connect Stenson, Brad's family company.
They track down the address of a dirt bike rider who tried to run Hailey down. They find his dead body made to look like a suicide and Hailey recognizes him as Will's killer. Marcus was a career criminal and a hired gun for Arcand. Arcand was behind many of the payoffs, including bribing Tom to drop the story and paying the hacker to create a phony profile account.
Hailey realizes that the bank accounts were in Switzerland and makes the connection to Clyde's father's company. She rushes to the lake house and finds Clyde waiting to give her the gift of truth before killing her. Clyde confirms he did the bribing to preserve his family's legacy and reputation. He admits to killing Emma because she couldn't be bought off. He never meant for Will to be killed and only tried to have Hailey killed because of Emma's desperate misinformation that Hailey knew everything. Hailey and Clyde have a shootout that ends with Danny shooting Clyde dead.
Hailey sits by the lake. Jonas informs her that they found Emma's remains in the treeline and she will receive a proper burial. Danny talks to her about the bittersweet resolution of finding Will's killer. They give her space but after a moment, she grips the photo of Will in her hand, gets up, and joins the others.
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