An arrest warrant goes horribly wrong when Deputy US Marshal Cady Maddix is captured and held captive by a mentally unstable man. She manages to escape, but not before she’s beaten and tattooed with a violent scene from her captor's dark and damaged mind: a burning church and screaming children. Three weeks later, she’s back on the job and assigned a warrant for Frank Burgess, The Cremator. A corpse and human cremains have been found on the radical zealot’s property, and clues are in short supply. But Cady soon meets a survivor of the killer, a mute young woman who points them to a burnt-out rural church the man attended. Cady is shocked to discover the church is a duplicate of the one she bears on her back. Cady is determined to find the connection between former church members who’ve died bizarre deaths in recent years. But there's a killer who will stop at nothing to complete his deadly list, even if it means adding Cady as his next victim.