When Kate Summerlin was 11 years old, she climbed out her bedroom window looking for a taste of freedom. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her --- the killer’s voice --- saying: “Don’t turn around.” Now, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim, a college student, Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over.

Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living quietly and cautiously in Houston when a troubled, obsessive stranger shatters the safety they have carefully constructed for themselves. Sean is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen, scorned by a woman he’s been dating, pulls out a gun at the store where she works and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots --- becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news. But Sean’s newfound notoriety exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past. One of them blames Sean for his brother’s death. The other wants to recover a treasure that Sean and Molly stole from him.

Private investigator Jack Pellum has spent two years searching for the man who he believes murdered his wife --- a man he last saw wearing a peacoat and a fedora. When a local writer commits suicide, he leaves a bewildering message that may be the first breadcrumb in a winding trail of unsolved murders. Michael Underhill has a sweet and beautiful girlfriend, and together they're building their future home. Nothing will go wrong, not if Underhill has anything to say about it. The problem is, Underhill has a dark and secret past, and it's coming back to haunt him. These two men are inexorably drawn together in a mystery where there is far more than meets the eye, and nothing can be taken for granted.

Names in a manuscript: The cops see black words on a page; the killer sees red. Editor David Loogan, who we first met in BAD THINGS HAPPEN, finds a package on his doorstep that links to a fresh murder and points to several more planned attacks. Can the killer be stopped before he has crossed off all the names on his list?