On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith's new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother's safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door.

Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intruders, and within minutes they too are shot dead. And when the Atlanta police force turns up, Faith has some difficult questions to answer. But she has some desperate questions of her own. What were the killers searching for? Ex-Atlanta police chief Evelyn Mitchell was once under investigation by Faith's partner Will Trent. Is her mother directly involved this time, and where is she now?

With Faith suspended from duty, Will, together with the help of Dr Sara Linton, must piece together the fragments of a brutal and complicated case – and catch a deeply troubled and vicious murderer with only one thing on his mind. To keep on killing until the truth is finally revealed...