You Can Scream Summary: Laurel Snow’s Deadliest Case
TL;DR
A sniper’s bullet strikes a defendant on the courthouse steps, and the FBI agent standing beside her becomes part of the crime scene.
That is where You Can Scream by Rebecca Zanetti begins — the fifth entry in the Laurel Snow Thrillers series.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Laurel Snow has returned to Washington State for the preliminary hearing of her half-sister, Abigail Caine, who stabbed their father to death.
What follows pulls Laurel and Fish and Wildlife Captain Huck Rivers into a case involving long-range shootings, missing people, and secret research in the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula.
The novel mixes a fast-moving criminal investigation with the ongoing psychological standoff between two sisters who share DNA and very little else.
- Who it follows: FBI agent Laurel Snow and Fish and Wildlife Captain Huck Rivers, working a multi-jurisdictional case in Washington State.
- The setup: Abigail Caine, Laurel’s sociopathic half-sister, is shot by a sniper outside a courthouse and survives only because she wore a vest.
- The mystery: Sniper attacks, a murdered conspiracy podcaster, and unusual brain lesions point toward an illegal bioweapons program hidden inside a biomedical research company.
- The personal stakes: Laurel cannot tell whether the shooter is targeting her, her sister, or the secret both of them are close to uncovering.
- Core themes: shared blood versus shared morality, manipulation of public perception, corporate greed, and the gap between legal outcomes and justice.
Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Laurel Snow | FBI Special Agent in Charge leading the investigation into the sniper attacks and the bioweapon conspiracy. |
| Huck Rivers | Fish and Wildlife Captain, former military sniper, and Laurel’s partner and boyfriend. |
| Abigail Caine | Laurel’s half-sister, who stabbed their father Zeke Caine and is shot by a sniper outside the courthouse. |
| Walter Smudgeon | FBI agent and Laurel’s partner; half-brother of the missing podcaster Tyler Griggs. |
| Wayne Norrs | Seattle FBI agent who is shot in the chest while accompanying Abigail. |
| Henry Vexler | Abigail’s defense attorney, secretly a former military sniper working with Oakridge Solutions. |
| Dr. Bertra Yannish | Lead scientist at Oakridge Solutions directing the aerosolized yew-tree bioweapon project. |
| John Fitz | Oakridge Solutions staff member who abducts Viv and guards captives in the hidden lab. |
| Dr. Sandoval | Oakridge Solutions executive killed by a sniper during an FBI interview. |
| Tyler Griggs | Conspiracy podcaster and Walter’s half-brother, found dead in Widow’s River. |
| Dr. Miriam Liu, Larry Scott, Melissa Palmtree | Oakridge Solutions researchers who died or were silenced after the bioweapon experiment. |
| Viv Vuittron | Sixteen-year-old FBI intern abducted from a locker room after finding a hidden door at Oakridge. |
| Tim Kohnex | Local resident who claims the wind warns him of danger; kidnapped and held in the lab. |
| Zeke Caine | Deceased pastor and cult leader of the Genesis Valley Community Church; father of Laurel and Abigail. |
| Dr. Ortega | County coroner who identifies the neurotoxic brain lesions in the victims. |
| Rachel Raprenzi | Host of the true-crime show The Killing Hour and Huck’s ex-fiancĂ©e. |
| Mark Bitterson | Petty criminal hired to ram Laurel and Walter’s SUV; stabbed to death by his accomplice. |
| Detective Joshua Robertson | Elk Hollow police officer investigating Tyler Griggs’s death. |
| Deputy Director McCromby | Laurel’s FBI superior overseeing the multi-jurisdictional case. |
| Aeneas | Huck’s trained Karelian Bear Dog. |
Read Also:Â Listen for the Lie Summary: A Twisty True-Crime Thriller
You Can Scream Summary: The Full Story
Spoilers ahead. The plot and ending are described below.
A prologue shows a man fleeing pursuers dressed in black on a rainy night. Rather than be captured again, he jumps into traffic.
Twenty-nine days after Abigail Caine stabbed their father Zeke to death, Laurel Snow sits in a Genesis Valley courtroom with Huck Rivers. As they step outside, a long-range shot strikes Abigail in the chest. She survives because she was wearing a bulletproof vest.
Huck, a former military sniper, traces the shot to an old Co-Op tower about 850 yards away. In the same window of time, FBI agent Walter Smudgeon learns his half-brother, podcaster Tyler Griggs, has vanished from Elk Hollow.
Driving to investigate, Laurel and Walter are rammed off the road by a lifted black pickup driven by petty criminal Mark Bitterson. Their SUV rolls onto its roof, and Laurel shoots the truck’s passenger through the windshield. The driver escapes into the rain.
Tyler Griggs’s body is later recovered from Widow’s River. Coroner Dr. Ortega finds aggressive, abnormal brain lesions in his skull, caused by a toxic chemical or viral agent.
Tyler’s files lead Laurel and Walter to Oakridge Solutions, a biomedical research firm. During an interview with executive Dr. Sandoval about three dead researchers, a sniper shot shatters the office window and kills Sandoval instantly while Walter pulls Laurel to the floor.
Fish and Wildlife officers report that an ancient stand of protected yew trees on Stony Mountain has been illegally clear-cut. Searching the mountain, the team finds the crashed black truck and Mark Bitterson’s buried body. He had been stabbed to death by his co-conspirator, not shot by Laurel.
Dr. Ortega confirms that Bitterson, Griggs, and Dr. Liu all carried identical, unnatural brain lesions. The finding links the yew harvesting, Oakridge Solutions, and the killings into one chain.
Sixteen-year-old FBI intern Viv sneaks through Oakridge Solutions and spots a hidden basement door near the clean rooms. She is then abducted from a sports locker room by Oakridge staff member John Fitz.
Abigail visits Laurel at the FBI office above Staggers Ice Creamery, and a third sniper attack sends rounds through Laurel’s windows from the northern mountain ridge. Laurel tackles Abigail to the floor while Huck and Agent Wayne Norrs pursue the shooter into the woods.
As the search for Viv widens, local resident Tim Kohnex is shot and taken from his home. Agent Norrs is later ambushed and shot in the chest while with Abigail, and survives after she calls for emergency evacuation.
Working through the crime scenes, Laurel identifies Henry Vexler — Abigail’s high-priced defense lawyer — as the rogue sniper. Vexler is a former military sniper operating in secret with Dr. Bertra Yannish at Oakridge Solutions.
His targets were tied to the lab’s illegal bioweapons project: an aerosolized neurotoxic compound harvested from yew trees that causes fatal brain lesions. Abigail was shot because of what she knew about it.
Vexler corners Laurel and Abigail inside the Fish and Wildlife building and forces them into a car trunk. He drives them deep into the mountains to the hidden underground facility where Viv and Tim Kohnex are held.
Locked in a holding room, Laurel mixes descaler, peroxide, and ammonia in a plastic mop bucket. The reaction produces a controlled chemical pressure explosion that destroys the door’s lock assembly.
Laurel takes a fire ax from an emergency cabinet, subdues John Fitz, and fights Vexler in the secondary lab, slashing him across the ribs. Dr. Yannish tries to escape into the storm with a pressurized canister of the airborne bioweapon.
Huck arrives overhead in a Fish and Wildlife helicopter and shoots Bertra through the forehead from the open chopper door in the rain. Laurel lunges across the wet concrete and catches the falling canister before it ruptures.
Afterward, Abigail trades her knowledge of the bioweapon’s storage locations for a federal immunity deal. State Prosecuting Attorney Tamera Hornhart drops the state murder charges against her for Zeke Caine’s death, citing self-defense.
Read Also:Â We Begin at the End Summary: A Haunting Crime Saga
On a televised episode of The Killing Hour, Abigail presents herself as an innocent heroine while praising Laurel’s bravery. At home by the fireplace, Laurel and Huck acknowledge that double jeopardy prevents any retrial for Zeke’s murder.
Laurel stays determined to hold her sister accountable for other crimes, secure in her life and her relationship with Huck, who describes her as his reason.
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Romantic Suspense / Crime Thriller
- Core Narrative Tropes: Analytical FBI profiler versus sociopathic half-sister, protective law enforcement hero, small-town Pacific Northwest setting, rogue sniper conspiracy, secret bioweapons lab, true-crime media circus
- Tone & Atmosphere: Tense, dark, gritty, analytical, with a damp, rain-soaked Pacific Northwest mood
- Primary Conflict: Laurel Snow and Huck Rivers must uncover a bioweapon conspiracy tied to rogue snipers and fatal brain lesions while navigating Abigail Caine’s psychological maneuvering
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced, multi-threaded procedural plotting that alternates between forensic work, shootouts, and intimate character scenes
- Book Structure: A prologue followed by 38 chapters, narrated linearly with shifting third-person focalization
- ISBN: 978-1496760821 (ISBN-10: 1496760824)
- Pages: 320
- Series Position: Book 5 of 5 in the Laurel Snow Thrillers
