Menacing anonymous phone calls. A vicious mutilation of the garden. A pipe bomb thrown through a window. The five young women who live in the pleasant old brown shingle house in Berkeley are starting to get the idea that someone doesn't like them. But P.I. Jeri Howard is alarmed by the escalating violence--intuition warns her there's more involved than simple hostility. Then, from her own not-so-distant past, she remembers a pattern of chilling madness, an evil that knows no limit and feels no remorse. . . .