Bounty hunter and former physician Rick Parker has tracked a bail fugitive to a small Eastern Washington town only to learn that the man has been murdered in a cheap motel. All he needs to collect the bail premium is to identify the body. In steps Jessica Monroe, an LA private eye with a startling assertion: the body is not Parker's target but the husband of a San Francisco socialite who's absconded with the family fortune. The descriptions of both men are identical, right down to a large tattoo. They have to consider the possibility that the men are identical twins, separated at birth, and one of them has played the role of Cain by murdering his brother. The killer is at large, forcing the professional antagonists to join forces to find him, and in the process are accused of murder as well. Outside the law while trying to prove their innocence, they travel to the wilderness of the Idaho mountains, where waits a secret so terrifying it could only exist in a primitive forest far from civilization.

Bounty hunter Rick Parker has one week to find Michael Norton and make ten thousand dollars over the premium. Norton, a pharmaceutical company rep, hacked his company's computer system and stole the formula for a breakthrough cure of Alzheimer's disease. He put the plans on a thumb drive and tried to sell it. FBI agents arrested him but couldn't prevent him from throwing it down a storm drain when they caught him. There isn't a copy-or is there? Norton skipped out on a bail of one million dollars and if he isn't found his beautiful wife Samantha and their daughter Emily will lose the family home. She promises to pay Parker a bonus if he catches her missing spouse and hints there may be more intangible benefits besides. A white collar criminal should be easy to catch, but from the start ex-physician Parker encounters complications. The job was supposed to be redemption for muffing an earlier assignment. Present day events trigger long repressed memories that incapacitate him without warning. Samantha's ex-lover winds up dead in a trash chute. Parker's associate Finch gets shot and lies in a coma. After that, it gets worse. Norton remains on the loose, but he's dangerously ill with H1N1 influenza. An unlikely pair of allies comes to his aid and plots to recover the only remaining copy of the stolen plans. In order for Parker to succeed he needs to conquer not only his internal demons but a force more diabolical than he ever imagined.