His hand trapped in the door of a speeding car, a man struggles to remain upright as he's dragged along a deserted stretch of mountain road. It's the perfect place to drive a man to his grave - literally. Starting with a crime so gruesome even prowling coyotes keep their distance, a killer begins crisscrossing the southern states on a spree of grisly murders.

A hundred miles away, Ali Reynolds is grieving. The newscasting job she once delighted in is gone and so is the philandering husband she loved and thought she knew. When a member of the family who gave Ali a generous scholarship for her education decades earlier suddenly requests a meeting, Ali wonders what it can mean. But before she can satisfy her curiosity, she receives another startling call: a friend's teenage daughter has disappeared. Ali offers to help but, in doing so, she unknowingly begins a quest that will reveal a deadly ring of secrets, at the centre of which stand two undiscriminating killers.