Avery Disappears

Four years before the main story begins, Ridley Bennett’s life changes forever when her identical twin sister, Avery, disappears the night before her college graduation. Avery is a talented lacrosse player and captain of her university team, and she vanishes during an outdoor party.

Ridley searches the dark forest nearby and finds Avery’s custom silver lacrosse-stick keychain on the ground. There is blood on it, but no sign of Avery. She has seemingly disappeared without a trace.

In the years that follow, Ridley turns her grief into a mission. Using the public name Ridley Sawyer, she creates Sounds Like Serial, a hugely successful true-crime podcast devoted to cold cases and missing people. She wants to give attention to victims whose cases have been forgotten, but she is also quietly searching for the answer she has never been able to find: what happened to Avery?

That search eventually leads her to Shady Cove, Oregon.

Ridley Comes to Shady Cove

Ten years earlier, sixteen-year-old Emerson Sinclair was a promising high school tennis player when someone abducted her after practice. Emerson survived only because she managed to jump from her captor’s speeding truck. Despite suffering a broken hip, she crawled along a rural road until she was found by Trey, a local man who would later become the owner of The Whiskey Barrel.

Emerson survived, but the kidnapping permanently changed her. Her attacker was never identified, and she now lives an extremely isolated life behind heavy security.

Ridley has become convinced that Emerson’s abduction was not an isolated crime. She believes Emerson was actually the first known victim of the same predator who would go on to abduct young women across the country.

Unfortunately, Emerson’s older half-brother happens to be Mason County Sheriff Colter “Colt” Brooks.

Colt is immediately hostile toward Ridley. He has spent ten years blaming himself for Emerson’s kidnapping because he was supposed to pick her up from tennis practice that night and arrived twenty minutes late. He is intensely protective of his sister and views true-crime podcasters as opportunists who profit from other people’s trauma.

When Ridley approaches Emerson’s house, Emerson initially refuses to speak with her. Ridley nevertheless reveals why she has come: she has identified twenty-three abduction cases she believes are connected, beginning with Emerson.

Colt orders her to leave.

Ridley returns to her camper van at the Lonepine Lake campground, only to discover scratches around the lock. Once inside, someone suddenly attacks her, knocking her down before escaping. Her investigation has barely begun, and someone already seems desperate to stop it.

Colt Realizes Ridley May Be Right

Ridley continues investigating people connected to Emerson’s original case, including former parks groundskeeper Grady Smith and Emerson’s old tennis coach, Bryan Kerr.

Trey eventually learns something Colt does not know: Ridley’s interest in missing women is deeply personal. Her own twin sister was abducted. Trey confronts his friend and tells him that his anger toward Ridley is preventing him from seeing why she is really there.

Colt apologizes, and Ridley finally shows him the full scope of her theory.

The twenty-three victims share remarkably specific characteristics. They were young blond women between sixteen and twenty-four, all student-athletes and exceptional performers. They had scholarships and belonged to the National Honor Society. The crimes also show an escalation. Emerson escaped the earliest known attempt. Later victims were drugged and released with incomplete memories before the perpetrator progressed to torture and murder.

Avery was victim number ten.

The possibility that Ridley is right becomes even harder to dismiss when someone breaks into the sheriff’s evidence locker. Deputy Dawson is knocked unconscious, and Emerson’s old case files are scattered around the room.

Colt initially wonders whether Ridley could have done it, but her remote podcast editor, Sully, provides a timestamped video-call alibi showing that she was working from her camper at the time.

That means someone else is interfering with the investigation.

Soon afterward, Ridley is attacked again. An intruder ambushes her at the campground dump site, strangles her until she nearly loses consciousness, punches her in the ribs, and warns her to leave Shady Cove.

When Colt sees how badly she has been hurt, he brings her to his cabin rather than allowing her to remain alone. They return to her camper and discover that it has been trashed. Her laptop, Emerson’s files, and six years of local high school yearbooks are gone.

Someone isn’t merely trying to frighten Ridley anymore. She has become a target.

Ridley and Colt Reopen the Case

Colt now commits himself fully to working with Ridley. As they spend more time together, their initial hostility gives way to trust, attraction, and eventually a romantic relationship.

Their investigation produces what looks like a major break when Ridley studies the surveillance footage supporting Bryan Kerr’s original alibi. The video supposedly shows Kerr at a gas station at 8:13 p.m. on the night Emerson disappeared.

But something is wrong with the footage.

Kerr is dressed for warm summer weather. According to the historical weather information, Shady Cove was experiencing an unusual cold snap that night, with temperatures around sixty-two degrees. The tape could not have been recorded when Kerr claimed it was.

Confronted by Colt, Kerr finally confesses that he bribed the gas station clerk to switch the surveillance recordings. But his reason has nothing to do with Emerson’s kidnapping. At the time, Kerr was having an illegal sexual relationship with seventeen-year-old Tara Gibson, and he falsified his alibi to hide where he actually was.

Kerr is guilty of a serious crime, but he is not the serial predator Ridley is looking for.

At the same time, Emerson begins taking tentative steps toward reclaiming the life her abductor stole from her. Inspired partly by Ridley’s determination, she agrees to sit down for a podcast interview and publicly tell her story.

Ridley is also forced to make a decision about her own career. Her network boss, Baker, arrives in Shady Cove and tries to exploit Ridley’s personal trauma for attention and profit. Rather than allowing him to turn Avery’s disappearance into content on his terms, Ridley quits the network and decides to continue her podcast independently.

Emerson Remembers Sully

Emerson’s interview finally provides the detail that cracks the case open.

Thinking carefully about the night she was taken, she remembers hearing quick, athletic footsteps immediately before she was attacked. Her captor also had a distinctive habit: he constantly chewed Grape Bubblicious gum.

That memory sends them back through the old high school yearbooks.

Emerson recognizes Shawn Sullivan, an All-American college tennis player who had run a summer tennis clinic for her high school team ten years earlier. She remembers that he was always chewing grape gum.

The discovery connects Emerson’s kidnapping to someone with the athletic ability and opportunity to travel among young female athletes.

But Ridley is about to discover that Shawn Sullivan has been much closer to her than she ever imagined.

Before Colt can get to her, Shawn attacks Ridley in Emerson’s garden, drugs her, and abducts her.

Sully Reveals the Truth About Avery

Ridley wakes chained inside a sophisticated, concealed RV and discovers the devastating truth.

Shawn Sullivan is Sully, her trusted podcast editor.

For years, Sully has pretended to be an older man living and working in New York. During their video calls, he used wigs, facial prosthetics, and fabricated backgrounds to disguise his real identity.

His tennis career gave him the perfect hunting ground. By traveling to clinics around the country, he could meet talented young female athletes, study them, stalk them, and eventually abduct them before moving on.

And the twenty-three cases Ridley uncovered were only part of the truth.

Sully tells her that he victimized thirty-four women and murdered twenty-six of them.

Avery was one of those women.

After killing Avery, Sully became fascinated by Ridley because her voice was identical to her sister’s. When Ridley began investigating cold cases, he deliberately entered her life as a fan and eventually became her editor. For four years, the man helping Ridley investigate missing women was the same man responsible for her sister’s disappearance.

Now Sully intends to end the story himself. He plans to force Ridley to record a final confession for her podcast, kill her, and disappear.

Ridley Fights Back

Colt and law enforcement eventually trace an LLC connected to Sully and locate his RV near a bluff overlooking Constellation Lake.

Sully takes Ridley to the edge of the cliff at gunpoint. Ridley still has Avery’s silver lacrosse-stick keychain hidden in her pocket, a physical reminder of the sister whose disappearance has driven everything she has done for the past four years.

Rather than wait for Sully to kill her, Ridley attacks.

She headbutts his already bloodied nose, disrupting his grip long enough to make her move. Then she throws herself at him and sends both of them over the cliff into the lake below.

Colt immediately jumps after them.

He reaches Ridley and saves her.

Sully does not survive.

Ridley Finally Brings Avery Home

Sully’s death does not end the investigation. The FBI searches his RV and storage facilities and discovers extensive evidence documenting his crimes, including journals, maps, and victims’ driver’s licenses kept as trophies.

For families across the country who have spent years wondering what happened to their daughters, the evidence finally provides answers.

Ridley’s family receives the answer they have waited four years to hear. Avery’s remains are located in Arizona, along with her custom graduation necklace. At last, her family can bring her home and hold a proper memorial.

There are consequences for other crimes uncovered during the investigation as well. Bryan Kerr is prosecuted for statutory rape and drug distribution. Emerson continues working through the trauma that kept her isolated for a decade and begins venturing back into the community.

One year later, Ridley and Colt are married at Emerson’s home in Shady Cove.

Ridley continues producing her true-crime podcast independently, but her life is no longer defined solely by searching for Avery. She finally knows what happened to her sister and has been able to bring her home. With Colt beside her, Ridley moves forward while continuing the work that grew out of Avery’s disappearance, carrying her twin’s memory with her into the life she has finally begun to build.