When a school shooting rips through her community, Rachel O'Malley must find the child who saw the shooting and locate the missing gun.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own--from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher...

It was a relatively minor criminal matter, but enough that the U.S. Marshals obtained a warrant to enter the home. They didn't expect to unearth trophies from a score of killings. Now Lucas Davenport is on the trail of a serial murderer, one who was able to operate for years without notice or suspicion. But there's even more to this killer than meets the eye.