On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off
the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston
coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste
container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic and
bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as
identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen
years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to
Montreal to gather evidence.
Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly
alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. So focused is
Tempe on identifying the container victims that, initially, she
doesn’t register how their murders and the pestilence may be
related. But she does recognize one unsettling fact. Someone is
protecting a dark secret—and willing to do anything to keep it
hidden.