“Dean Koontz is one of the best suspense writers operating today, with unfailing narrative drive.” —The Dallas Morning News “[A] fast-paced masterpiece . . . impossible to put down.”— Lansing State Journal The plane crashed without warning. Three hundred and thirty people died. No explanation. No survivors. Now one man who lost everything that night is about to discover the answers he needs to go on with his life—or the conviction to finally end it. Crime reporter Joe Carpenter lost his wife and two daughters in the crash of Flight 353. Aching from his loss, Joe is unable to work, think, or do anything but grieve, and wait for his own death. Then Joe meets Rose, a woman who claims to be the crash’s sole survivor. But before he can probe further, the elusive Rose slips away and Joe is left with haunting, terrifying questions: If Rose lived through the crash, is it possible his family could have survived it, too? Did the authorities conspire to hide what really happened that night? Joe’s search for the truth will shatter him like nothing has before—and force him to question everything he thinks he knows about life and death. “Taut plotting, stark terror, and sweet redemption.”— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Koontz at his haunting, page-turning best.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “Dean Koontz is one of the best suspense writers operating today, with unfailing narrative drive.” —The Dallas Morning News “[A] fast-paced masterpiece . . . impossible to put down.” — Lansing State Journal “Taut plotting, stark terror, and sweet redemption.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna. Chapter Two Later Saturday morning, driving to Santa Monica, Joe Carpenter suffered an anxiety attack. His chest tightened, and he was able to draw breath only with effort. When he lifted one hand from the wheel, his fingers quivered like those of a palsied old man. He was overcome by a sense of falling, as from a great height, as though his Honda had driven off the freeway into an inexplicable and bottomless abyss. The pavement stretched unbroken ahead of him, and the tires sang against the blacktop, but he could not reason himself back to a perception of stability. Indeed, the plummeting sensation grew so severe and terrifying that he took his foot off the accelerator and tapped the brake pedal. Horns blared and skidding tires squealed as traffic adjusted to his sudden deceleration. As cars and trucks swept past the Honda, the drivers glared murderously at Joe or mouthed offensive words or made obscene gestures. This was Greater Los Angeles in an age of change, crackling with the energy of doom, yearning for the Apocalypse, where an unintended slight or an inadvertent trespass on someone else's turf might result in a thermonuclear response. His sense of falling did not abate. His stomach turned over as if he were aboard a roller coaster, plunging along a precipitous length of track. Although he was alone in the car, he heard the screams of passengers, faint at first and then louder, not the good-humored shrieks of thrill seekers at an amusement park, but cries of genuine anguish. As though from a distance, he listened to himself whispering, " No, no, no, no ." A brief gap in traffic allowed him to angle the Honda off the pavement. The shoulder of the freeway was narrow. He stopped as close as possible to the guardrail, over which lush oleander bushes loomed like a great cresting green tide. He put the car in Park but didn't switch off the engine. Even though he was sheathed in cold sweat, he needed the chill blasts of air conditioning to be able to breathe. The pressure on his chest increased. Each stuttering inhalation was a struggle, and each hot exhalation burst from him with an explosive wheeze. Although the air in the Honda was clear, Joe smelled smoke. He tasted it too: the acrid mélange of burning oil, melting plastic, smoldering vinyl, scorched metal. When he glanced at the dense clusters of leaves and the deep-red flowers of the oleander pressing against the windows on the passenger side, his imagination morphed them into billowing clouds of greasy smoke. The window became a rectangular porthole with rounded corners and thick dual-pane glass. Joe might have thought he was losing his mind—if he hadn't suffered similar anxiety attacks during the past year. Although sometimes as much as two weeks passed between episodes, he often endured as many as three in one day, each lasting between ten minutes and half an hour. He had seen a therapist. The counseling had not helped. His doctor recommended anti-anxiety medication. He rejected the prescription. He wanted to feel the pain. It was all he had. Closing his eyes, covering his face with his icy hands, he strove to regain control of himself, but the cat