In a world where evil wears a hundred faces, the most dangerous man in the room is the one who has already studied yours.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Coble Bray is still healing from a skull fracture when a mysterious stranger rides into Lamar, Missouri and tries to kill him. That's just the opening move. A summons to Carthage puts Coble in a boarding-house room with a headless body and one word written in blood on the wall: PRIDE. Then a second murder. Then a third. Someone is working through the Seven Deadly Sins - methodically, invisibly - and the only person who seems to understand the pattern is Coble.
Behind the killings is Harlan Vexler - a brilliant and ruthless consultant who studies men the way a scientist studies specimens, then weaponizes what he learns. Vexler doesn't brawl. He simply watches, calculates, and waits for the moment a man's own nature destroys him.
When Vexler turns his attention to Coble and the people Coble loves, the marshal must choose between keeping his distance and drawing a line that may cost him everything.
Can Coble outthink a man who has already thought of everything, or will the devil collect what's due?