There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. And there are three dead bodies on the island of St. Luke -- each victim missing a hand. It's the strangest, most disturbing series of murders the Caribbean has ever known -- and one of the few crimes that could pull FBI Special Agent E. L. Pender out of retirement. In all of his years, he's never faced such a diabolical underworld drenched in superstition. At the heart of this darkness is a husband-and-wife team with a perverse plan so powerfully consuming, so brilliantly evil, that Pender can only watch and wait...as the grisly hand of fate reaches out for its next victim.