Five women enter the wilderness on a corporate retreat. Only four come back. The missing woman is Alice Russell, and the story each colleague tells about her disappearance doesn't quite match the others. Someone is lying. Someone knows more than they're saying. Federal Agent Aaron Falk has reasons of his own for wanting to find Alice. She's not just a missing hiker—she's an informant in a financial investigation, and her disappearance threatens to unravel everything. Falk follows the trail into the remote Australian bush, where the forest is dense, the weather brutal, and the terrain unforgiving. What he uncovers is a mess of workplace rivalries, old grudges, and secrets that have festered for years. The women may have been colleagues, but they were never friends. Jane Harper turns a corporate team-building exercise into a taut psychological thriller. The wilderness here isn't just a backdrop—it's a pressure cooker, stripping away pretense and exposing the fractures beneath. Harper excels at atmosphere, and the claustrophobic tension of the hike mirrors the paranoia of the investigation. Trust erodes with every inconsistent statement. The question isn't just what happened to Alice Russell. It's whether anyone is telling the truth at all. And if they are, what does that say about the rest of them?