In the heart of tornado country, a howling funnel of destruction screams across the prairie and slams into the sleepy town of Promise, Oklahoma. As the mammoth twister splinters homes, shreds crops and tosses cars through the air, only three of the town's terrified residents know that an even more malevolent force has come to torment them - and they will not live to tell anyone.

When Police Chief Charlie Grover finds three mutilated corpses in a tornado-ravaged farmhouse, his first thought is that the victims were impaled by flying debris. But then he discovers that they were brutally murdered and that their executioner has left a particularly hideous calling card. Yet how could the killer predict exactly when and where a tornado would strike and use it to cover his tracks?

Charlie steps into a chaotic world of the risk-takers who chase storms, in search of a cunning criminal ... and this is a killer unlike any he's encountered before: one who conspires with the awesome power of nature to commit and conceal unspeakable crimes.