The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington DC's Metro PD and the FBI has a proven operating procedure: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. Then a series of military-style attacks erupts. No sooner do Cross and Sampson join the investigation than Alex is brutally sidelined. The threat to Sampson's best friend, his partner, his brother, sends him reeling. The patterns are too random, Alex has told him. Don't trust anyone.