Blanche Potter, an up-and-coming filmmaker, has distanced herself in every way she can from her father, the notorious killer and cult leader, Chuck Varner. In 1996, he went on a shooting spree before turning the gun on himself. Now, Blanche learns that her mother has been murdered. She returns to her childhood home, where she soon discovers there’s more to the death than police are willing to reveal. The officer who’s handling the case is holding information back, and a journalist who’s nosing around the investigation is taking an unusual interest in Blanche’s family. Blanche begins to suspect that Chuck Varner’s cult has found a new life, and that her mother’s murder was just the beginning of the cult’s next chapter. Then another killing occurs.

For years, Martin Reese has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and obsessively studying them, using them as guides to find the missing bodies of victims. On his latest dig, Martin searches for the first kill of Jason Shurn, who may have been responsible for the disappearance of his wife’s sister. But when he arrives at the site, he finds a freshly killed body lying among remains that were left there decades ago. Someone else knew where Jason Shurn left the corpses of his victims…and that someone isn’t happy that Martin has been going around digging up his work. Hunted by a real killer and by Detective Sandra Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape, he may have to go deeper into the killer’s dark world than he ever thought.