Near the end of WWII, in a small town in France, fighting is at its peak when a young paratrooper jumps from a burning airplane and drifts into the raging battle below. As he frantically searches for cover, a dying woman gives him an artifact and begs him to keep it safe. Seventy years later the soldier, now an old man, is brutally murdered and the artifact is missing. It is Thanksgiving Day and Portland Police Detective September Gale is given her first murder case. Because of the bazaar nature of the crime, Gale is compelled to bring the victim's grandson, Daniel Tate, in for questioning, and though he is a suspect, she must use him to sort out the crude drawings left behind in the murdered man's blood. As the puzzle unravels, they are caught up in a larger mystery that takes them to the other side of the world. What Daniel thought he knew about his grandfather is challenged beyond comprehension. It their quest for answers, Gale and Tait find themselves in the cross-hairs of the assassin who is willing to kill anyone in his path as he searches for the Threads of the Shroud.