Let me tell you all I know for sure. My name. Shauna. I woke up in a hospital bed missing six months of my memory. In the room was my loving boyfriend—how could I have forgotten him?—my uncle and my abusive stepmother. Everyone blames me for the tragic car accident that left me near death and my dear brother brain damaged. But what they say can't be true—can it? I believe the medicine is doing strange things to my memory. I'm unsure who I can trust and who I should run from. And I'm starting to remember things I've never known. Things not about me. I think I'm going crazy. And even worse, I think they want to kill me. But who? And for what? Is dying for the truth really better than living with a lie? Imagine that you awake from a coma and discover that you have no memory of the past six months. You have a boyfriend you don’t remember; your beloved brother is severely brain damaged (your fault, apparently); you’re up on charges of drug possession and criminal negligence; and, oh yes, your father, who is currently running for president of the United States, despises you. That’s the situation facing Shauna McAllister, who must try to regain her memory if she’s to clear her name and find out what really caused the car accident that nearly killed her and her brother. But there’s one problem: a group of conspirators will kill her if she starts to remember anything. This is a very enjoyable thriller with plenty of twists and turns—one of those books where you’re afraid to get too close to the characters in case one or more of them turn out to be keeping some nasty secrets (and, here, some of them are). A definite treat, not just for Dekker and Healy’s devoted fans, but for anyone who enjoys a good thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end. --David Pitt Kiss By TED DEKKER ERIN HEALY Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2008 Ted Dekker and Erin Healy All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59554-470-4 Chapter One SIX WEEKS LATER Nightmares of death by black water ticked off the hours of the deepest sleep Shauna McAllister had ever experienced. In an eternal loop, she choked and drowned and was somehow resuscitated, only to choke and drown again, and again, in an endless terror. Always the same fight, the same thrashing for air. Always the same intense agony for the same amount of time before the screen of her mind dimmed. Then it would flicker back to life. Merciless, exhausting. Her stomach hurt with the penetration of a hundred slicing knives, cutting her enough to scrape and bleed and sting. The cold water was not a strong enough anesthetic. She could not remember where she was or how she had come to be here. Why wasn't her father with her? And where had Rudy gone? The water closed over her head again. She considered welcoming death and letting her fatigue have its way. She was so tired. Something touched her. A stable hand, gentle and helpful, grabbed her wrist. In that Herculean grip was all the strength she could not muster. And so it was that at the very moment she resigned herself to drowning, she sensed as she rose through the black waters that maybe she would not die today. Shauna broke the surface, gasping and flopping like a snagged fish tossed onto the deck of a- No, she was on a bed, some narrow thing that rattled when she moved. Her hands hit metal rails and she grabbed hold to avoid sliding back underwater, though some sixth sense told her there was no water. She started coughing and could not stop, as if the oxygen in this place would kill her just as quickly as liquid. How did she get here? Someone shoved a pillow under her shoulders. Someone was speaking. Several people were speaking at once, animated and urgent. She opened her eyes and took her first full lungful of air. A middle-aged woman in nurse's scrubs stood next to the bed, bright eyes wide and gap-toothed mouth slack. She hit an intercom button in the panel over the bed, punching it so hard the plastic speaker rattled. Shauna was half-aware of people spilling into the room. "Dr. Siders," the woman said into the wall. She put a hand over her heart as if to prevent its escape. "We need you here now. She's awake!" * * * Still disoriented, Shauna lay at the center of the small gathering in the room. Through her mental haze, she locked onto a tall doctor in a white lab coat as he moved to the head of her bed. The man was 80 percent limbs and 20 percent torso, long and wiry and strung taut. "Hello, Shauna. You can hear me?" She felt her chin dip a fraction of an inch. He put his hand on her arm. "I'm Dr. Gary Siders. And you-well let's just say you're one very lucky girl. Without a doubt, the most unusual case I've had in here for a while." Where was here ? Where was Rudy? She tried to remember. Random images collided in her mind in a wreck that could not be construed as an explanation: shopping at an open-air market in Guatemala, congratulating a colleague at the CPA firm where she wo