Tony finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings when he travels to Texas to assist the local district attorney in the case of Darius Grady, who is accused of murdering his wife and two children.

The murder of an elderly woman, suffocated in her own home, seems too deliberately staged to be an accident of robbery. And when Alex calls in Tony he realises that the killer will strike again. But could the deaths be connected to the sudden return of Tony's old hero, respected psychologist Jonathan Goode?

Tony is faced with a series of deadly puzzles when a killer rapes and strangles young female victims in Bradfield, but chooses to dress and identify them as young women he killed several years before in Europe. Why is he boasting to police about his past, leaving the bodies where they can easily be found? And why—and how—is he choosing confident, successful victims from the world of business, and killing them in Bradfield?

Alex and Tony investigate the murders of two young children, whose deaths bear signs of a ritual killing. Their investigation leads them to a laboratory where they find evidence of animal sacrifice and paintings in blood. As the investigation turns personal, Paula and Kevin find themselves under the influence of a curse, while Tony remains skeptical of the killer's ability.

When a young girl is abducted from a housing estate, Alex and Tony know they may only have hours to get her back alive. While Alex launches an Amber alert—a massive public appeal—Tony builds a profile of likely suspects. A distraught mother reports her daughter Janita as missing, but the Amber alert produces no information. Is the abduction all it seems?