For any little boy or girl who hears the Train Man speak, Who feels his rancid breath caress their pretty cheek, Must close their eyes, pretend to sleep, and very softly pray, Or else the evil Train Man may carry them away. Finally free of her troubled upbringing, Alex Donovan is able to live out her childhood dream of working for the FBI. But soon after she becomes a member of the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, authorities in Missouri contact them about bodies found on freight trains—all killed in the same way. Alex never expected to be forced to confront her past in this new job, but she immediately recognizes the graffiti messages the killer is leaving on the train cars. When the BAU sends her to gather information about the messages from her aunt in Wichita, Kansas, Alex is haunted by the struggles she thought she'd left behind forever. In a race against time to solve the case and recover a deadly virus sample the killer intends to spread, Alex must face how far she'll go—and what she's willing to risk—to put a stop to the Train Man.

After facing the demons from her past, Alex Donovan is ready to move on and focus on her career at the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). When renowned profiler and BAU co-founder John Davis is found dead in his hotel room, the FBI is called in to work on the strangest case they've ever faced. How do you find a killer who murders his victims without touching them? When it becomes clear that the killer is targeting agents in Alex's unit, they are ordered into lockdown, sheltered in the dorms at Quantico. Alex bunks with a controversial agent, Kaely Quinn, who has returned after being dismissed three years earlier. As they work together, Alex discovers in Kaely the role model she's never had, despite being warned away. As Alex questions who she wants to become, things get personal when the brilliant killer strikes close to home. Now Alex will do anything to find the killer—even at the risk of her own life.

Someone has been abducting women with long dark hair across Virginia. When the FBI is called in to help, Alex Donovan, a behavioral analyst, is tasked with putting together a profile. She's aided by her friend and colleague Logan Hart, but he has been acting strangely and won't say why. When the kidnapper demands that Alex meet him at an abandoned amusement park in exchange for the location of all his captives, she takes the bait. But the meeting proves to be a trap, and the building she's in explodes. Finding herself imprisoned with several other women, Alex works to think one step ahead of her captor. But the more Logan and the BAU learn about the kidnapper, the more they fear Alex may not make it out alive this time.