The quiet life of Ben Hudson is disrupted when a naked body of a student, with a Tic-tac-toe game carved into her torso, is dumped on the campus of Tower State University—the campus he is supposed to protect. Professor Tristan Clarke realizes the murderer must know about her past. Deciding she needs to find out why this has happened at Tower State, Tristan joins Ben to navigate false leads, their own growing attraction to each other, and more dead bodies on campus to find out the secret behind the three in a row.