Even the deadliest gangs in Chicagoland fear the Cross Crew and carefully avoid their cinderblock bunker headquarters.The Crew is notorious for its ruthless efficiency and cold-blooded cunning. Why, then, would anyone be foolhardy enough to threaten them --- and, even more dangerously, their loved ones? As Cross catches the scent of a far-reaching conspiracy, he realizes that it all connects to an unexplained event in his past: a massacre from which he emerged inexplicably unscathed, save for the blue mark on his face that pulses when danger is near. If he's reading the signs accurately, Cross might find himself again facing a terrible menace that is not altogether human.

Esau Till’s race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedy --- it’s his one last chance to protect his brother Tory after he’s gone.

When professional thief Sugar is accused of a rape he couldn’t have committed because he was robbing a jewelry store at the time, he ends up in jail. But when he gets out, a member of his heist crew has disappeared, and it’s up to Sugar to track him down.