• A powerful bomb destroys a family planning clinic in the Northwest Florida town of Spanish Bay; as firefighters and other first-responders engage in a desperate attempt at rescue, a follow-up bomb —timed to catch them unaware— detonates with lethal results.• A 13-year-old girl collapses in a Spanish Bay shopping mall, inexplicably displaying the marks of stigmata on her palms. Within days, she has become the nexus of religious and social turmoil. But is she also the target of some darker, even monstrous, intent?• A single shot from a sniper's rifle signals that the website threats of a fanatical gunman have become a horrific campaign of terror.These elements ignite in Virgins And Martyrs, a powerful thriller as timely as tomorrow's headlines. Spanish Bay police detective Aria Quynn is a savvy investigator, the product of tough streets ad harsh life-experiences—loyal to her friends, scarred by self-inflicted emotional wounds.Quynn—injured only slightly in the clinic bombing that killed her partner— is officially on the sidelines of a case that quickly is claimed by the FBI. But almost immediately, she finds herself unofficially tasked to determine whether the alleged "visions" of 13-year-old Maddie Shepard are connected to this latest domestic-terror attack.Evidence points to the bombing as the work of a domestic-terrorism milita known as the Centurions of the Lord—and specifically, to one Bobby Teasdale, the object of a nationwide manhunt since the sniper killing of another family-planning staffer a year earlier.But as Quynn plunges ever deeper ito the case, she finds herself enmeshed in a malevolent web of lies and betrayal that point to a conspiracy far deeper, and far more evil.