Three years after the serial killer "Jack of All Trades" murdered her husband, forensic psychologist Sam Waters returns to the FBI to help solve a rash of murders in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sam and the newly-formed Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF) investigate a series of arsons, but her return to duty attracts unwelcome attention from Jack, who pays a visit to her home.
Sam investigates a series of murders which bear striking similarities to the methods of a killer whom Bailey put in prison 10 years earlier. Sam suspects that the real culprit is still free, and through her gifted insight, she finds clues in the ancient I Ching art of divination that lead her to a high-ranking military officer, who may be protecting the slayer.
Sam and the VCTF must find a twisted assassin before he kills a celebrated political candidate, But Sam is distracted by new evidence that could help her find Jack's lair.
A disturbed loner is waging war against power plants and refineries, but the VCTF team suspects that the attacks are the work of eco-terrorists.
A rift opens between Sam and Bailey after Jack kills an FBI agent who had information about the murder of Sam's husband - information she knew nothing about.
The VCTF investigates a series of kidnappings that has Atlanta in a panic. The case proves difficult, and when a connection is finally made, Sam realizes that time is running out.
Sam probes a series of murders that appear linked to a death row inmate while Jack prepares to select his next victim--from among the VCTF team.
As Sam and the VCTF work a series of ritual murders on Indian reservations, Bailey's FBI ID turns up pinned to the body of Jack's latest victim.
Bailey becomes attracted to the wife of a missing doctor while investigating two puzzling disappearance cases that may be linked.
A murder at a home for the criminally insane has all the landmarks of one of the institution's residents, but he insists upon his innocence--and Sam backs up his contention.
A murderer has a taste for FBI agents and a fondness for modern art--posing his victims to replicate famous paintings.
Aware that Jack is now monitoring the entire VCTF team, Sam and John concoct a scheme to flush out the killer, which eventually leads them to his hidden lair.
As Sam and her colleagues close in on Jack, they are forced to interrupt their pursuit to investigate a bizarre murder where a man is buried under thousands of silver coins--a preamble to a series of killings that point toward an eccentric, powerful family.
As the VCTF learns that the tightly knit killers are on a unified mission to punish the corrupt and over-extravagant, they face a more primary case in their pursuit of Jack--which leads to a Costa Rican hideout where he is cornered at last.
In New York, a vigilante is exacting "justice" on people recently acquitted of crimes--and filming his murders for broadcast on the evening news.
A deranged nuclear scientist takes a roomful of high-powered Washington insiders hostage, and Sam is called in to try to help bring the crisis to a peaceful resolution.
A series of fatal hit-and-run accidents on remote highways puts Sam on the trail of a murderous truck driver, who she believes is repeatedly recreating a traumatic event from his childhood.
Suspicions abound when the VCTF team is abruptly ordered to participate in a Field Training Exercise, and it quickly becomes clear that the FBI brass is trying to uncover a mole--but Bailey is the only person with access to the compromised information.
The VCTF is summoned to catch a serial killer who carves smiles into his victims' faces and shrouds them in lace. Sam unravels the motivation behind the crimes, but the investigation is thrown for a loop when the prime suspect joins the growing list of victims.
The poisoning death of a wealthy computer magnate puts the VCTF on the trail of a diabolical murderer who uses exotic, venomous animals as weapons.
Just as Sam figures out the identity of the "venom killer," Jack strikes again, first by framing the FBI and VCTF by impersonating an agent and beating up a few suspects, and then abducting both Sam and the killer.
A man who committed 40 murders in Asia in the 1970s escapes from a Calcutta prison and heads for New York. Meanwhile, Sam's suspected of a murder herself, and Bailey's near death after being shot by his daughter.
A vicious killer, who works only in the rain, beats his victims severely, then picks up their bodies and hurls them. Meanwhile, Jack plays Henry Higgins to a parolee.
Jack's back, but with changes to his MO; Bailey's new boss is the ex-husband of a woman he's been seeing; George receives an offer he'll have a hard time refusing.
Coop reenters Sam's life when the VCTF requests his services in tracking a bomber; Frances has been caught and the DA is throwing the book at her.
Cleanliness isn't next to godliness: one murder victim is found with soap in his mouth and another has been "scrubbed to death."
Jill kills a boutique clerk to please Jack, while Sam, who's grieving over Coop's murder, is persuaded to go to a college reunion---where a classmate is murdered.
The VCTF corners Jack, but he escapes---despite being shot by Sam. Meanwhile, Frances turns 18.
While the VCTF puzzles over a string of North Carolina murders, Jack recuperates at the home of his mother and Sam's in-laws visit her.
Two men---one in Ohio, the other in New Jersey---are murdered on their 32nd birthdays. Both were killed by a stalker who had been following them their whole lives. Elsewhere, Sam has a run-in with her mother-in-law.
A mercy killer (of sorts) is harvesting organs for transplantation purposes---then killing the "donors." Meanwhile, Bailey learns from Behar that he's the target of a probe; and Chloe tells Sam that someone has been taking pictures of her in school.
While the VCTF is preoccupied with break-ins in which the occupants were murdered, Sam's mother-in-law proceeds with her effort to gain custody of Chloe; and Frances tells Bailey that she's been sleeping with John Grant.
A sniper targets drivers stuck in traffic jams, and with each shooting positions himself farther away from his victim. He also leaves a "message": a replica of an ancient Greek urn. Meanwhile, John can't figure out why Handleman is out to get him.
The bodies of three young men are discovered; all had been beaten and, it turns out, all had been desperate for money. Sam suspects that they were losers in staged fights to the death.
While Sam and Bailey track a rapist on the Florida Panhandle, John and Marcus find a guy who can lead them to Sharon Lesher.
A man who's certain that his son was unjustly convicted of murder kidnaps Angel and threatens to kill her unless the VCTF "proves" that his son is innocent.
A kidnapper kills an Atlanta city councilman even though the ransom was paid. It seems he wants attention, not money---particularly from one TV reporter. Meanwhile, Jack begins his efforts to spring Jill from jail.
A "new-age ax murderer" targets abusive people, hacks and burns them, and places crystals in their hands---the MO of an avenging comic-book heroine.
The VCTF is called in on a year-old murder case. The victim: an 18-year-old beauty-pageant veteran. The prime suspects: her parents. Meanwhile, Jack challenges the VCTF to "a game."
While Jack schemes to get to the imprisoned Jill, a hooded figure who's obsessed with corruption is setting off explosions around the country. Also: Sam has an unsatisfying meeting---her first in 10 years---with her father.
While the agents zero in on the hooded bomber, Sam has an unpleasant meeting with her father. Meanwhile, Jack wants to spring Jill.
The day after Jack's clever escape from the prison after Samantha unsuccessfully tried to bait him and she killed Sharon instead, Samantha must look into herself in order to find him. Everything seems to point to her childhood which reveals that Jack has apparently stalked her all his life. Then, Jack abducts an infant, and tries to lure Sam into finding him in which the VCTF learns Jack's real identity (so it seems).
The team investigates a serial rapist-turned-murderer in Illinois, whose sporadic timing of the attacks puzzles Sam as well as the connection between his victims whom are left in the woods. Sam figures out that the killer is an angry and frustrated married man taking out his rage and frustration on about-to-be-wed women. Meanwhile, with Jack-of-All-Trades finally captured and imprisoned, Sam begins searching for a new house for her and Chloe.
A killer who castrates the victims seems to be driven by feelings of public duty and legal responsibility. John gets into trouble through no fault of his own for something that appears in the press about the case.
Ten women are found dead in Alabama. The killer? "He's a hunter," Sam surmises, but she can't nail her profile and that bugs her.
In Newark, N.J., a killer cuts the hands off one victim and decapitates another. Both are women but have nothing else in common.
The VCTF is summoned to Allentown, Pa., where the FBI's man on the scene is spinning his wheels on a serial-murder case in which the killer burns his victims' faces.
Someone's digging up Jewish graves in George's home town, but Sam doesn't think it's a hate crime.
It's Christmas in rural Georgia, where an ax-murderer finishes the jobs by taking swatches of the victims' clothing. In Atlanta, Sam trims the tree with her new beau.
A prosecutor wants to tie four murders in an Annapolis, Md., bar to a drug kingpin, but Sam thinks otherwise.
The day before convicted killer Martin Fizer is scheduled to be executed a murder is committed in the same fashion---and with the same gun---as Fizer's had been.
In Los Angeles, three men have been murdered---by hand---and their bodies dumped near the sites of 1940s and '50s Hollywood landmarks. And at VCTF headquarters, George finds something disturbing on Donald Lucas's computer.
A serial killer targets victims in the South who are all roughly the same age and have the same blood disorder; Sam learns her father's secret.
In Miami, models are losing their heads, courtesy of a killer with a chip on his shoulder (and surgical tools).
Having hacked onto the Internet from prison, Lucas has contacted someone in a small northern-California town. "You think he has a disciple?" Bailey asks Sam.
A 32-year-old woman is abducted---or is she?---from her children's soccer field by a 16-year-old boy. Meanwhile, Bailey is increasingly tense as his wife's remarriage approaches.
An arsonist who is setting fatal fires in Sam's Atlanta neighborhood has a modus operandi involving dead birds.
Sam and Bailey are held hostage in a jewelry store after a botched holdup.
The bodies of rich people are washing ashore in Palm Beach, Fla., with a finger missing. The only other thing they have in common: the same investment firm.
Sam calls in Jarod of "The Pretender" to pursue the mastermind behind a series of kidnappings.
Sam is at the trial of her husband's killer and on the trail of a murderer in Mexico.
While Sam tries to find the key to the mind of a serial killer, an FBI agent working with Bailey insists that she's able to control the ex-boyfriend who's stalking her.
A new profiler is called in to help locate Sam, who was abducted by Jack, the bogus sheriff.
More killings occur that resemble Jack's original murders and the relationship between Sam and Chloe is examined.
In her first case as the new profiler, Rachel Burke is on the trail of a serial killer whose victims are left deliberately posed.
Bailey revisits a 15-year-old serial-murder case, from which the bodies have just been found. Soon after he and Rachel arrive in town, another murder occurs and an abduction takes place.
Rachel and the team investigate a series of killings wherein each of the victims had recently been involved in an extra-marital liason.
Rachel and her colleagues travel to St. Louis to try to solve three killings that have occurred in as many weeks.
Rachel attempts to solve the murders of a number of brunette women in their early 30s.
After an eighth victim is claimed by a killer who travels in boxcars, Rachel and the team go to Arizona, the scene of the latest murder.
Rachel forms a bond with a mob boss, whose only daughter has become the latest victim of a serial killer.
Jarod and the FBI's Rachel Burke discover that the two dirty Secret Service agents, who are their most direct link to the killers of a fellow agent, are found slain, forcing them to begin their investigation all over again. However, while romantic sparks fly between the pair, Jarod suddenly disappears and is tortured by the murderer, who is on a crazed mission to eliminate everyone he thinks is involved in the agency's corruption.
While shopping in a convenience store with his girlfriend Kate, Agent John Grant intercedes during a robbery, but when Kate is wounded and fights for her life, Rachel and Bailey are concerned that he will mete out his own justice outside the law. Even John's shooting of a suspect comes under review, prompting him to angrily resign and grapple with his overwhelming emotions of guilt for Kate's grave condition
When Rachel visits her old college to appear on a radio call-in show to discuss a series of ongoing sexual assaults on campus, the case takes a peculiar personal turn when the rapist repeatedly dials up to mock her on-air, prompting an ongoing mind game of cat-and-mouse between them. On other fronts, Rachel finds herself drawn again to an old flame who is now married to her good friend and later meets the therapist assigned to her brother's drug rehabilitation. Likewise, George slips in his shaky bid to end his own addiction to painkillers.
After a police officer and other authority figures are found stabbed in the backs, Rachel centers her investigation on a young woman, Pamela, who is reported to have assumed multiple identities which probably spring from memories of early child abuse. But Rachel faces an even greater personal threat from an FBI honcho who has falsely accused her of forcing a sexual relationship of a subordinate -- a charge that could ruin her career. Elsewhere, Bailey confronts George over his reliance on prescription drugs and orders him to get help.
Rachel, Bailey and the team head to Yosemite National Park where a maniac brutally killed a mother and her two daughters, and while circumstantial evidence points to a local outlaw biker, Rachel constructs a different suspect profile -- one who feels remorse and might have sibling issues. Meanwhile, George's lingering substance abuse problem causes a dangerous embarrassment for Bailey and the VCTF just as an attractive Congresswoman begins an investigation of the unit, and she is most impressed by Bailey. Back at home, Rachel's budding romance with her brother's drug counselor hits a snag.
A tormented Rachel must push aside her personal nightmares when she realizes that a disturbed child slayer, whom she could not convict as a prosecutor years before, has resumed kidnapping young girls and putting them in gilded cages where he worships them as virginal ""princesses."" At the same time, Rachel is troubled by the sudden disappearance of her drug-addicted brother from a halfway house and her romantic relationship with therapist Tom enters a new stage. Also, George frets about the hot shot computer whiz who's temporarily replaced him while he's on leave due to his own struggle with narcotics.
A desperate Rachel and the VCTF team cast about wildly to quickly form a profile of an anonymous sniper who's perched atop the pump house of a dam with a commanding view of his victims in an adjoining park, but their options are limited out of fear that the shooter may have wired explosives that could inundate downtown Atlanta. While the body count rises, John risks his life to save some trapped patrons and Rachel suspects the murderer might be an enraged husband whose philandering wife is pinned down with her lover.
Rachel and the team search for a serial killer who does not seem to follow a pattern following the abduction of a 10-year-old boy from a local diner. Meanwhile, Bailey must testify before a congressional subcommittee to save VCTF funding which is threatened to be cut off by Congresswoman Archer. Also, Rachel find that her apartment was broken into and the audiotape she made of Joel Marks confessing to planting a wire on her has reappeared in the court dockets where Marks is dismissed from the FBI and vows revenge against Rachel.
When a talented concert pianist is found slain, Rachel suspects the victim's prodding parents until she discovers the young woman was pregnant and that her baby was forcibly delivered and kidnapped. But her biggest surprise comes when Jarod re-surfaces at her door. While the two indulge their mutual romantic passion, Jarod's mission is to help her deal with the threat posed by Marks, a fugitive FBI agent who delights in tormenting her.
Rachel is emotionally distraught after her brother's death and she's further rattled by the mind games played by wanted ex-Agent Marks, who she believes is responsible for a series of murders, but Marks needs her to accomplish his own agenda. Malone has even more concerns when he is ordered to conduct a performance review of his VCTF members as rumors fly in Congress that the elite unit will be disbanded.
As Rachel continues to be spooked by Marks, she and the team investigate a series of murders of businessmen who were all involved with the same woman.
