A popular priest lies dead of a heroin overdose in a Cleveland apartment, following an apparent tryst with a high-priced callgirl. Nick Stella knew the man, and he knows salable news when he finds it. But there is something waiting for the struggling freelance journalist on the dead cleric's e-mail that suggests this is not just another sordid case of fatal human frailty. A clue, a warning, a threat in the words of a great poet cries out that this was no accident. And it's beckoning Nick into the mind of a psychopath, a twisted serial killer who is out for revenge. He's going to keep dispensing his own unique brand of poetic justice -- killing all who attended an elite Halloween party 20 years ago -- unless one of his targets can stop his reign of terror. In an affluent Ohio suburb a world away, Amelia Saintsbury's computer screen carries the same cryptic message. Someone is watching her.. .and waiting. A nightmare stands just outside her door, ready to devour everything and everyone she cares about - her life, her home, her wayward husband, her innocent little girl - uniting Amelia and an unorthodox city reporter in a desperate hunt for a killer.