When his child is taken, a father will stop at nothing to get her back in this explosive, white-knuckle thriller from the bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger . When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter... Shot twice by an unseen assailant, Dr. Marc Seidman lies in a hospital bed. His wife has been killed. His six-month-old daughter has vanished. But just when his world seems forever shattered, the ransom note arrives:  We are watching. If you contact the authorities, you will never see your daughter again. There will be no second chance . With no one to trust, and mired in a deepening quicksand of deception and deadly secrets, Marc clings to one unwavering vow: bring home his daughter, at any cost. Praise for No Second Chance “Nimble and ingenious.”— The New York Times   “The author doesn’t build suspense. He opens fire.”— New York Daily News “At times the suspense in  No Second Chance  is almost painful.”— Chicago Sun-Times “A wild ride made even more wrenching because the terrain is home, family, love, and loss.”— Houston Chronicle “This crackling spellbinder will...keep you mesmerized from beginning...to head-spinning, unexpected end.”— Forbes “Coben again keeps the reader off-balance with innovative story lines and diabolical bad guys.”— People “Thrillers as satisfying as No Second Chance clearly have the Coben stamp.”— Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel “The emotional onslaught of Marc's gut-wrenching, self-questioning, relentless narration...will carry readers like a tidal wave through the novel's twists and turns.”— Publishers Weekly   Harlan Coben is the #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including I Will Find You , The Match , Win , Fool Me Once , Stay Close , and The Stranger , as well as the award-winning Myron Bolitar series. Coben has more than eighty million books in print in more than forty languages worldwide, and several of his novels have been made into Netflix series. The winner of Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards, he lives in New Jersey. No Second Chance By Harlan Coben Signet Book Copyright © 2004 Harlan Coben All right reserved. ISBN: 0451210557 Chapter One When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter. At least, that is what I want to believe. I lost consciousness prettyfast. And, if you want to get technical about it, I don't even rememberbeing shot. I know that I lost a lot of blood. I know that a second bulletskimmed the top of my head, though I was probably already out bythen. I know that my heart stopped. But I still like to think that as I laydying, I thought of Tara. FYI: I saw no bright light or tunnel. Or if I did, I don't rememberthat either. Tara, my daughter, is only six months old. She was lying in her crib.I wonder if the gunfire frightened her. It must have. She probably beganto cry. I wonder if the familiar albeit grating sound of her cries somehowsliced through my haze, if on some level I actually heard her. Butagain I have no memory of it. What I do remember, however, was the moment Tara was born. Iremember Monica-that's Tara's mother-bearing down for one lastpush. I remember the head appearing. I was the first to see my daughter.We all know about life's forks in the road. We all know about openingone door and closing another, life cycles, the changes in seasons. But themoment your child is born ... it's beyond surreal. You have walkedthrough a Star Trek -like portal, a full-fledged reality transformer. Everythingis different. You are different, a simple element hit with a startlingcatalyst and metamorphosed into one far more complex. Your world isgone; it shrinks down to the dimensions of-in this case, anyway-asix-pound fifteen-ounce mass. Fatherhood confuses me. Yes, I know that with only six months onthe job, I am an amateur. My best friend, Lenny, has four kids. A girland three boys. His oldest, Marianne, is ten, his youngest just turnedone. With his face permanently set on happily harried and the floor ofhis SUV permanently stained with congealed fast food, Lenny remindsme that I know nothing yet. I agree. But when I get seriously lost orafraid in the realm of raising a child, I look at the helpless bundle in thecrib and she looks up at me and I wonder what I would not do to protecther. I would lay down my life in a second. And truth be told, if pushcame to shove, I would lay down yours too. So I like to think that as the two bullets pierced my body, as I collapsedonto the linoleum of my kitchen floor with a half-eaten granolabar clutched in my hand, as I lay immobile in a spreading puddle of myown blood, and yes, even as my heart stopped beating, that I still triedto do something to protect my daughter. I came to in the dark. I had no idea where I was at first, but then I heard the beeping comingfrom my right. A familiar sound. I did not move. I merely listened tothe beeps. My brain felt as if