John Bare wants to tell you about the summer he turned twenty-eight, the summer a psychopath tried to kill him. He also wants to tell you about a little boy who was abducted four years earlier and how he helped solve the case.

In 2009, John loses his teaching job because of budget cuts and works in a factory where people soon invite him to join The Lost Ones, an informal support group. When he learns one of the members had a child abducted years earlier, he grows obsessed with solving the case. John is convinced the killer is someone at the factory, and his amateur sleuthing quickly puts him and his new friends in danger.