Flash! Illuminated by lightning, a lifeless human hand seems to reach from a barrel of asphalt beside the Charlotte racetrack. Even for forensic anthropologist Dr Tempe Brennan, never easily shocked, it is a disturbing sight. And now she is under pressure to find answers before thousands arrive for the year's big race. But before she can carry out a proper examination, the FBI mysteriously confiscate and destroy the body. It's a dead end. Until Wayne Gamble, a young engineer, alerts Tempe to the disappearance of his sister and her boyfriend from Charlotte twelve years earlier, and she determines to uncover what really happened to them. When, a few days later, Gamble's body is found crushed under the wheels of a race car, Tempe realises the situation is truly sinister. And that even her

An underground chamber is exposed in a dilapidated house with sagging trim and peeling paint. Called to the scene is forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan. What awaits her below is a ritualistic display: slain chickens and a goat - and a skull, ghostly pale, rests on a pedestal, the lower jaw missing, the empty orbits staring back at her.