In 1997, Atlanta police officer John Cooper responds to a call about a loose tiger on the city’s edge—and vanishes without a trace. His disappearance is forgotten by everyone but those who need it buried.

Twenty-five years later, Dr. Kaori Tsunaki, a veterinary pathologist numbed by loss and secrets of her own, is called to examine what’s thought to be a rogue elephant killed near Roswell, New Mexico. Instead, she finds a creature that hasn’t existed for over 200 million years—proof that the past is bleeding through the cracks of reality.

As impossible predators prowl suburban streets and fragments of history rewrite themselves in the minds of the living, Kaori is pulled into a conspiracy older than she imagined. Beside her are two people she’s not sure she can trust: Alicia Taylor, the ex-lover she left behind, and James Wyatt, a conspiracy theorist whose obsession with Cooper’s disappearance has its own origins.

Together they must find the truth, but every answer only deepens the nightmare: shifting timelines, lost memories, bodies appearing where they don’t belong.

When the truth comes out, Kaori must face a question with no good answer: does the hope once offered justify the horrors unleashed? And what will be sacrificed to keep its secret buried?

RIFT is a dark speculative thriller about fractured reality, buried guilt, and the price of playing god with time itself.