Top Washington television news anchor Lacie Wagner knows fire. She has the scars to prove it - and the nightmares. Nightmares that began as a child when a horrific fiery accident took her father's life. Nightmares filled with a stranger's face and a taunting voice promising that she too will burn alive. But one cold Thanksgiving weekend, as snow falls on the city, the nightmare voice comes impossibly to life, a ragged whisper on the phone warning that The Dead Time is near. Lacie's young daughter disappears without a trace - and the nemesis is more than a whisper, more than a voice - a flesh and blood predator slamming into her life in a diabolical vortex of deadly fire and searing flame - one so cunning, the police won't even try to stop him. Only one man dares try - an iconoclastic FBI loner who breaks rules and cases. Jack Stein. A man driven by his own broken heart and dark secrets. Thrown together in a race against time, Jack and Lacie stalk a killer who lures them inexorably into an inferno of terror and destruction. The key to his identity is buried deep in Lacie's past. A past too terrifying to remember. A past she may die now trying to reach.