Joanna Flynn was lucky to be alive. Twice in a matter of minutes she almost died on a patch of oil-slicked highway. But when the doctors told her that she would suffer no lasting effects, they were wrong. For that night the dream began...

It was only of a house perched high above the sea, of a ticking clock and the lingering scent of roses. Yet night after night it awoke Joanna with a sense of panic. Its terror lingered throughout her days, urging her to do something--but what?

Then two strangers on the street called her Caroline, and Joanna knew she had to find an explanation for what was happening, or she'd lose her mind. What she finally uncovered was an obituary for a woman named Caroline McKenna--a woman who looked enough LIKE her to be her twin, a woman who was killed in a car accident on the same day Joanna should have perished.

Now her torturous nightmares and a tenuous connection have brought Joanna three thousand miles across country to the town WHERE Caroline lived--and died. Almost everyone has stories to tell about Cliffside's leading lady, and yet no one seems to have known her. Was she the shy wife or the seductress of men? The devoted mother or the selfish beauty?

Too soon Joanna realizes that it's not her sanity at stake, but her life. For unraveling the mystery of Caroline means uncovering the secrets in this picturesque town, secrets someone may have killed to hide. And that someone appears all too willing to kill again.

From the Paperback edition.

"Lady, are you all right?"She looked through the glassless window into a stranger's concerned face and heard an uncertain laugh emerge from her mouth.

"Yeah. Can you believe it?"

"No," he replied frankly, a grin tugging at his lips. "You ought to be in about a million pieces, lady. This has got be the luckiest day of your life."

"Tell me about it." She shifted slightly adding, "But I can hardly move, and I can't reach the door handle. Can you get it open?"

The stranger, a middle-aged man with the burly shoulders that come of a lifetime's hard work, yanked experimentally on her door. "Nope. There isn't a mark on this door, but it's been compressed in the front and back, and it's stuck tight. We're gonna need the Jaws of Life, sure enough. Don't worry, though--the rescue squad and paramedics are on their way."

Distant sirens were getting louder, but even so she felt a chill of worry. "I had a full tank of gas. You don't think--"

"I don't smell anything," he reassured her. "And I've worked in garages most of my life. Don't worry. By the way, my name is Jim. Jim Smith, believe it or not."

"It's a day to believe anything. I'm Joanna. Nice to meet you, Jim."

He nodded. "Same here, Joanna. You're sure you're okay? No pain anywhere?"

"Not even a twinge." She looked past his shoulder to watch other motorists slipping and sliding down the bank toward her, and swallowed hard when she saw just how far her car had rolled. "My God. I should be dead, shouldn't I?"

Jim looked back and briefly studied the wide path of flattened brush and churned-up earth, then returned his gaze to her and smiled. "Like I said, this seems to be your lucky day."

Joanna looked once more at the car crumpled so snugly around her, and shivered. As close as she ever wanted to come...

Within five minutes, the rescue squad and paramedics arrived, all of them astonished but pleased to find her unhurt. Jim backed away to allow the rescue people room to work, joining the throng of onlookers scattered down the bank, and Joanna realized only then that she was the center of quite a bit of attention.

"I always wanted to be a star," she murmured.

The nearest paramedic, a brisk woman of about Joanna's age wearing a name badge that said E. Mallory, chuckled in response. "Word's gotten around that you haven't a scratch. Don't be surprised if the fourth estate shows up any minute."

Joanna was about to reply to that with another light comment, but before she could open her mouth, the calm of the moment was suddenly, terribly, shattered. There was a sound LIKE a gunshot, a dozen voices screamed, "Get back!" and Joanna turned her gaze toward the windshield to see what looked LIKE a thick black snake with a fiery head falling toward her out of the sky.

Then something slammed into her with the unbelievable force of a runaway train, and everything went black.

There was no sense of time passing, and Joanna didn't feel she had gone somewhere else. She felt...suspended, in a kind of limbo. Weightless, content, she drifted in a peaceful silence. She was waiting for something, she knew that. Waiting to find out something. The silence was absolute, but gradually the darkness began to abate, and she felt a gentle tug. She turned, or thought she did, and moved in the direction of the soft pull.

But almost immediately, she was released, drifting once more as the darkness deepened again. And she had a sudden sense that she was not alone, that someone shared the darkness with her. She felt a feather-light touch, so fleeting she wasn't at all sure of it, as though someone or...

 

"Kay Hooper comes through with thrills, chills, and plenty of romance, this time with an energetic murder mystery with a clever twist. The suspense is sustained admirably right up to the very end."

 

"Harrowing good fun. Readers will shiver and shudder. Kay Hooper...knows how to serve up a latter-day gothic that will hold readers in its brooding grip."

 

"Kay Hooper is a master storyteller."

 

"Joanna is appealingly plucky and true to her mission as she probes the mystery that was Caroline."

 

"Hooper is a multitalented writer whose stories always pack a tremendous punch."

 

KAY HOOPER is the award-winning author of Hunting Fear, Touching Evil, Whisper of Evil, Sense of Evil, Once a Thief, Always a Thief, the Shadows trilogy, and more. She lives in North Carolina, where she is at work on the next installment in the Fear trilogy.

From the Paperback...