A Destitute Old Man Leaves a Valuable Painting in a Gallery at the Ringling Museum of Art and Triggers a Countdown to Disaster. A cryptic note left with the painting links it to Genevieve Swift, a visiting curator from the Louvre, and her father, a professor of history at Cambridge. In Gallery 3 something unknown is eating the paint on the face of a small lion in one of the museum's sixteenth-century paintings. A young girl who touches the painting becomes deathly sick. Paintings at a new exhibit in the Searing Wing suffer a similar fate with more people falling ill. Professor Hunter McCoy, investigates the strange events and uncovers a link to a secretive and deadly group called The Legacy. As he peels away layer after layer of the Legacy's secrets, McCoy realizes that a countdown has already begun-a countdown that if unchecked could cost countless lives and ruin the Ringling Museum of Art itself.