New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance’s journalist-turned-sleuth strives to grant a dying woman’s last request: to find the people who nearly killed her in this “perfect addition to her ongoing Ali Reynolds series” ( Suspense Magazine ). When a subdivision-in-the-making goes up in flames, everyone hopes that the unfinished, unoccupied homes will yield no victims. But when an unidentified woman is found barely alive and burned beyond recognition, she is immediately taken to the ER, where she lies for months in a medically induced coma. When she finally emerges from her coma, she is met with a bleak and lonely existence. Badly disfigured and suffering from amnesia, her recovery is further shattered by a cancer diagnosis. Now with sudden desperation, there are two crucial things she is desperate to discover: who saved her life and who tried to kill her in the first place. And Ali Reynolds is the only person she trusts to beat the clock. "Jance delivers a devilish page-turner." -- People "Compelling... satisfying." -- USA Today J.A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ali Reynolds series, the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and the Walker Family series. Born in South Dakota and raised in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington. Visit her online at JAJance.com. PROLOGUE She awakened to the sound of roaring flames and to searing heat and lung-choking smoke. Maybe she was already dead and this was hell, but why would she go to hell? What had she done to deserve that? Just then a scorched beam fell across her leg, and she felt the horrifying pain of burning flesh—her burning flesh. That’s when she knew wasn’t dead. She was still alive. And on fire. She tried to shake the burning two-by-four off her leg but it was too heavy. It wouldn’t budge. She tried shoving it away and managed to move it a little, but in the process her hand caught fire as well. She tried to sit up, desperate to find some avenue of escape, but the floor around her was a sea of flame. She was barefoot. She couldn’t bring herself to step into the fire. There was nowhere for her to go, no way to escape. It was hopeless. She was going to die. Falling back onto the bed, she began screaming and praying and coughing, all at the same time. “Please, God. Let it be quick. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Another wooden beam fell. This one didn’t land on her directly, but as the hungry flames licked away at it, she knew they were really searching for her. The pain was all around her now. Her whole body was on fire. Somewhere, far beyond the flames, she heard something else—the sound of breaking glass. Was there glass in heaven? “Hello,” a voice called. “Where are you?” Why is He asking that? she wondered. God knows everything. He must know where I am. Then, unexpectedly, a mysterious figure clothed all in yellow or maybe even orange rose up silently out of the flame and smoke. He was holding his arms stretched out toward her, reaching for her. Not God after all, she thought despairingly. Satan. I really am in hell. Darkness fell and there was nothing at all. TRIAL BY FIRE CHAPTER 1 On a gorgeous mid-May morning with temperatures still in the seventies, all was right with Ali Reynolds’s world. The cobalt blue sky overhead was unblemished by even a single cloud, and Sedona’s towering red rocks gleamed in brilliant sunlight. The seemingly endless remodeling project on Ali’s recently purchased Manzanita Hills Road house had finally come to an end. The workers were gone, along with their trucks and their constant noise. Now, seated on her newly refurbished flagstone patio and surrounded by an ancient wisteria in full and glorious bloom, she was enjoying the peace and quiet, as well as a third cup of freshly brewed coffee, while she worked on a speech, a commencement speech actually, that she was due to deliver at not one but two high school graduation ceremonies at the end of the week. How she had gotten roped into doing two commencement speeches one day apart was a wonder to her still. A year or so earlier Ali had agreed to take the helm of the Amelia Dougherty Askins Scholarship Fund, a charitable entity that helped provide financial assistance for college expenses to deserving students from schools all over Arizona’s Verde Valley. Though she was once an Askins Scholarship winner herself, this was Ali’s first year of administering the program. The time-consuming process of searching out and evaluating likely recipients had put her in touch with students, teachers, and administrators from a number of local schools. Ali’s ties to Sedona Red Rock High School had to do with the fact that both her son, Christopher, and her new daughter-in-law, Chris’s bride, Athena, taught there. When it came time to cajole Ali into agreeing to speak at commencement, her son and daughter-in-law had known just which strings to pull. Although Sedona was Ali’s