His name is Walker Gray. He rebuilds the faces of the slain. The lost, the forgotten, the unnamed. Through his skill and intuition, the missing dead are at last identified, reunited with who they were. Walker Gray is a savior, a savant, a surveyor of the final terrain. Death is his province, but for all he's seen, he has yet to witness the true scope of it.
In the burial gallery of a hillside monastery in central France, a Cistercian abbot is summoned to a disturbing discovery. In a chamber behind a concealed iron door, rests an ancient coffin of bronze, the lid secured by hammered rivets. More disturbing is what stands nearby - a bizarre altar, centuries old, constructed of the dead.
In a brick warehouse in Portland, Oregon, Walker Gray and Dr. Jeffery Gray, renowned father and son forensic team, are bonded by love, but also engage in a running contest with each other. They've successfully concluded another case - the craniofacial reproduction and identification of a fifteen-year old runaway recovered from a shallow grave. Now, through a mysterious client, a crate containing an ancient bronze coffin has arrived. Walker Gray's all-consuming task will be identifying the tangle of bones and black rags inside it.
Beneath an old building, a well is discovered where dozens of women have been dumped over the last century, all missing their heads. Law enforcement converges on the scene and a shadowy organization known as Terminus begins to make themselves known. Their envoy, Adrienne, perfect, poisonous, commences her darkly seductive games. Claimed by death, its cool, powerful embrace, she would like nothing more than to have Walker Gray join her.
While he tries to avoid being ensnared, Walker is driven to know whose bones are in the bronze coffin. And why the chief executive officers of Terminus are so intent on the final results of his reconstruction. As unnerving events escalate, and Walker's psyche slowly unravels, Dr. Katherine O'Neal, working the graveyard emergency room, strives to keep him together and their love alive. And homicide veteran and close associate, Detective Doris Shellhart, trying to sort through events, begins to doubt Walker's motives and his sanity.
For good reason. Dread is in the air and Walker's days and nights will become a waking nightmare. Those he knows, or loves, will meet violent ends and the unknown will shape itself into something horrifically recognizable. Emerging from the subterranean darkness is the final truth behind the deadly cult Terminus. Walker Gray, on the razor edge of life or death, must confront the face he has given it.