PROLOGUE

I was frantic. I had burst through the ring of police and ignored their shouts for me to halt. But at that moment nothing mattered except the person who was at the top of the towering structure and my getting there before it was too late.

Then the race up the stairs, hundreds of them, my breath coming in explosive gasps as I spit out a desperate prayer —“Dear God, I have to reach her in time.” I knew what I would likely find if I failed: only the void she would leave behind after beginning her bone-shattering fall toward earth.

I was scrambling, taking steps two at a time, missing and tripping, as I tried to tear the image out of my head of what could happen —her descent from that terrifying height, spiraling downward with one long, wordless scream. Simultaneously, my mind was on fire thinking how this must be delighting the demoniac who had brought all of this to pass. The evil one I had pursued relentlessly, maybe even recklessly. The entrance to the top level was in front of me. I braced myself for the worst.

But as I neared the last concrete step, just before the summit, where I hoped to stop this tragedy, my gut was seized by another possibility, nearly as horrible. That I was responsible. That my resolve to pursue the Jason Forester case and to unravel the evil forces behind that lawyer’s death might have been the cause of everything.

I felt my heart banging in my chest. The feeling of suffocation. Drowning. Panic setting in.

Then I jolted out of my sleep.

In my restless slumber, the sheets of my bed had been wound over my face. I yanked them off. After rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked at the clock —3 a.m. The little window over my bed had been left open, and I could hear the roar of the ocean tide that was crashing against the beach a hundred feet from my cottage. I took a few deep breaths, still groggy, and said it out loud.

“It was a dream.”

But then a second later, the numbing realization as the memories smashed their way in.

No, not just a dream. It really happened. All of it.