"A body is found in a barrel of asphalt next to Lowes Motor Speedway near Charlotte just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for race week. The next day, a NASCAR crew member shares with Tempe a devastating story. Twelve years earlier his sister, Cyndi Gamble, then a high school senior who wanted to be a professional racecar driver, disappeared along with her boyfriend, Cale Lovette. Lovette kept company with a group of right wing extremists known...

It's sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she's anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her. An identified corpse...