Emma Lane, a young mother, tragically loses her husband and son in a car accident. But she is positive that she saw someone take her boy, still alive, as she lay injured in the wreckage. Friends and family have almost convinced her it was a hallucination until she gets a mysterious phone call and a woman tells her, "Your baby is alive." Emma then embarks on a desperate search to find her son, as well as to find out what really happened the day of the accident.

Jack Gannon, a reporter who has just started work at the World Press Alliance, finds himself on his way to Rio de Janeiro to cover a bombing in a café that killed 10 people, including two other WPA journalists -- one of whom was supposedly meeting with a source at the site. Were the journalists a target, or were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? When authorities are less than cooperative, Jack strikes out on his own and soon finds there's more to the story than he ever suspected. He will risk his life in his pursuit of the truth.

Gretchen Sutsoff, a brilliant, sociopathic scientist, has been ostracized by her colleagues for her extreme views, including the belief that performing live human trials without the consent of the subjects is necessary for the advancement of science. She has been working for years in secret to develop a bioweapon and its antidote, effectively acquiring the power to choose those people she deems "worthy" of living and thus shape the future of humanity. Gretchen knows the weapon works because she has proved it in trials on unsuspecting humans, including young children. And now the day is fast approaching to put her grand plan in motion.

This exciting adventure has a few major players that readers follow throughout the book -- Jack and Emma are particularly compelling -- and dozens of minor characters in locations all over the world, each with a piece to contribute to the puzzle. The science behind Gretchen's experiments seems chillingly plausible, and the pace of the story is breakneck almost from the first page. The multiple threads of the plot create a complex web of intrigue that should appeal to readers who like a healthy dose of science with their thrillers.

Book Summary

A car crashes in Wyoming: A young mother is thrown clear of the devastating car crash. Dazed, she sees a figure pull her infant son from the flames. Or does she? The police believe it's a case of trauma playing cruel tricks on the mind, until the night the grief-stricken woman hears a voice through the phone: "Your baby is alive."

A bomb explodes in a Rio de Janeiro café: The heinous act kills ten people, including two journalists with the World Press Alliance news agency. Jack Gannon's first international assignment is to find out whether his colleagues were innocent victims or targets who got too close to a huge story.

A Caribbean cruise ends in horror: Doctors are desperate to identify the mysterious cause of a cruise ship passenger's agonizing death. They turn to the world's top scientists, who fear that someone has resurrected their long-buried secret research. Research that is now being used as a deadly weapon.

With millions of lives at stake, experts work frantically against time. And as an anguished mother searches for her child and Jack Gannon pursues the truth, an unstoppable force hurls them all into the panic zone.

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