The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Countdown returns with a knock-out suspense thriller that pits a mother and son against a killer who's the stuff of nightmares. If you close your eyes, he’ll get you. Sophie Dunston knows all too well how dreams can kill. As one of the nation’s top sleep therapists, she specializes in the life-threatening night terrors that her ten-year-old son, Michael, suffers from. But she is also an expert in another kind of terror–the kind that can turn a dream life into a living nightmare in the blink of an eye. Someone is watching. He’s a shadowy figure from out of her darkest fears and he hasn’t forgotten her. In one shocking moment of violence, he’d shattered Sophie’s world forever and left her with only one thing to live for: her son. But the nightmare isn’t over for Sophie Dunston. It’s just begun. He’s been waiting. Sophie was supposed to die the first time around, but fate intervened. This time he’ll make sure that not even a miracle will save her. It wasn’t a miracle that saved Jock Gavin, but it was pretty close. A semiretired hit man, commando, and jack-of-all-deadly-trades, he knows what Sophie is up against–and that she’ll need help. But the man he’s chosen for the job is as unpredictable as he is dangerous. Matt Royd is a wild card–hard, cool, merciless–and putting him into play changes the game completely. But to whose advantage? Sophie will soon find out. She will have to trust Royd because she has no choices left. Because the bogeyman haunting her dreams is all too real and he’s on the hunt again. Because the nightmare he’s got planned for Sophie won’t end when she wakes up screaming. It won’t end. Ever. In her latest thriller, the prolific, best--selling Johansen, dubbed the queen of suspense, introduces a new heroine, Sophie Dunston, a top-notch sleep researcher who developed a drug to battle the insomnia from which her father and millions of others suffer. But her nefarious former boss and his cohorts have used the drug she created to alter the minds of ordinary people like her father, who killed his wife and threatened Sophie and her young son. With hardened heart, Sophie has one goal: to kill her former boss, since every attempt she's made to expose him to the authorities has failed. Just as she discovers that there are many victims of her nemesis' mind-controlling experiments, one shows up with the same murderous intention. Sophie is leery of Matt Royd, and his first thoughts are to use Sophie, the author of his nightmares, to destroy the others. Brutal and deadly himself, Royd leaves Sophie no choice but to cooperate. The danger increases tenfold as the hunters become the hunted in this suspenseful tale of nightmarish evil. Patty Engelmann Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "A fast-paced, riveting, suspenseful read, with an underlying sense of romance between the two main characters."— State, Columbia, SC Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Killer Dreams, On the Run, Countdown, Firestorm, Fatal Tide, Dead Aim, No One to Trust and more. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia. Chapter One Two years later Fentway University Hospital Baltimore, Maryland What’s going on? You’re not supposed to be here.” Sophie Dunston looked up from the chart to see Kathy VanBoskirk, the head night nurse, standing in the doorway. “An overnight apnea study.” “You worked all day and now you’re monitoring an overnighter?” Kathy came into the room and glanced at the bed on the other side of the double glass panel. “Ah, an infant. The light dawns.” “Not so much an infant any longer. Elspeth’s fourteen months,” Sophie said. “She’d stopped having incidents three months ago and now they’re back. She just stops breathing in the middle of the night and her doctor can’t find any reason for it. Her mother is worried sick.” “Then where is she?” “She works nights.” “So do you. Days and nights.” Kathy gazed at the sleeping baby. “Lord, she’s beautiful. Makes my biological clock start ticking. My kid is fifteen now and there’s nothing lovable about him. I’m hoping he’ll turn back into a human being in another six years. Think I have a chance?” “Don is just your typical teenager. He’ll get there.” Sophie rubbed her eyes. They felt as if they had sand in them. It was almost five and the sleep study would be over soon. Then she’d run the errand that was on the top of her list before getting to bed and grabbing a few hours of shut-eye before she had to get back for her first one o’clock session with the Cartwright child. “And he offered to clean my car last week when you had him at the office.” “He probably wanted a chance to swipe it.” Kathy grimaced. “Or maybe he wanted the chance to score with an older woman. He thinks you’re cool-looking.” “Yeah, sure.” Right now, Sophie felt older than her years, frumpy, and ugly as sin. She turned back the chart and checked Elspeth’s case history. She’d had an apnea episode about 1:00