Dr. Alexandra Blake’s new job puts her at the forefront of her industry. As a geneticist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., Alex is charged with finding a vaccine against bioterrorism. But the institute’s new director, bitter over losing a bid to head the FBI, decides to refocus the institute toward crime solving. Soon Alex is forced to put her research on hold and cover forensics on a gruesome series of murders.

Across the country, women near military bases are turning up dead, their corpses covered in strange tattoos. The more Alex studies the case, the more disturbing questions she has about the killer’s motives. And when a new headline-making murder strikes particularly close to home, suddenly everyone around Alex—her boss, the Feds, even her congressman boyfriend—becomes suspect. Now it’s up to her to succeed where forensics fail, and Alex will risk everything to trace the enemy…or die trying.