Retired FBI agent Mark Marteau has spent a career staring into the dark-until Montana pulls him back in and reminds him the dark remembers his name. Chrystal is pregnant and trying to build something clean out of a life that never was, but the past doesn't stay buried; it festers, it circles, and it comes back with teeth. When whispers of cartel bloodlines and an old, brutal Christmas start stitching together with a religious scandal nobody wants reopened, Mark's instincts turn feral-because his wife is alone at an isolated cabin, and the kind of men he used to hunt don't stop when you retire. In a world where justice is bought, faith is weaponized, and vengeance travels light, the only question isn't who's guilty-it's who gets to live long enough to prove it.