Summoned by the White House chief of staff to investigate a series of elected official disappearances, Army intelligence veteran Jacob Winter finds the situation worsening when one of the missing victims is found brutally murdered.

Superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two groups want to stop it: local merchants and environmentalists. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands. The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters. The second explodes at the construction site itself. Who's behind the bombs, and how far will they go? It's Virgil Flowers's...

At 1:15 a.m, a Minnesota political fixer answers his doorbell. The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a moving car, lying on a plastic sheet, his body wet with blood. When the car stops, a voice says, "Hey, I think he's breathing," and another voice says, "Yeah? Give me the bat." And that's the last thing he ever knows. Lucas Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then--very troublingly--to...