Dying for Mercy

Thirty years ago, in a facility buried beneath a vast Wyoming emptiness, an experiment gone awry accidentally opened a door.

It is the world's best-kept secret—and its most terrifying.

Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the President of the United States. Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact.

Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for—a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope—as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest.

Because something is loose in the world.

And doomsday is not only possible . . . it is inevitable.

A seasoned television professional—the host of the top-rated KEY News morning show—Eliza Blake has reported on tragedies many times from behind the anchor's desk . . . and she has survived devastating crises of her own. But only now is she learning the true meaning of terror when her seven-year-old daughter, Janie, is kidnapped from summer camp. Forced to suffer through a mother's worst nightmare in the glare of the camera lights, Eliza finds herself trapped in a media circus as the police and FBI explore every avenue . . . and every lead winds up at a dead end.

But Eliza isn't going to just sit around and wait for answers—because every minute wasted in the desperate race to reveal the shocking motives of a ruthless abductor brings a frightened little girl one minute closer to her death.

On the day she died, Constance Young was the undisputed star of morning television. But her plans to move herself and her loyal audience to another network were cancelled when she ended up at the bottom of her swimming pool. And the fabled unicorn amulet that Constance had been wearing during her final hours—a gift from King Arthur to his beloved Guinevere and the centerpiece of the upcoming Camelot exhibit at New York's Cloisters museum—is missing.

A morning show veteran and now anchor of the KEY Evening Headlines, Eliza Blake is shocked by the death of her former colleague, and is determined to discover who wanted Constance out of the way . . . and why. To do so, she enlists the aid of three KEY News coworkers: "Jane-of-all-trades" Annabelle Murphy, who can switch from producing to sleuthing at a moment's notice; charming and fearless cameraman extraordinaire B.J. D'Elia to add brains, brawn, and a much-needed male perspective to the team; and Dr. Margo Gonzalez, on-air psychiatrist, who understands the complex puzzles of the human mind. Calling themselves "The Sunrise Suspense Society," they set out to get to the bottom of the heinous murder, in a case that will test their ingenuity and their courage to the very limits.

The deeper they dig, the more twisted the trail to Constance's killer becomes—as the list of suspects grows longer by the minute. Was it her spurned and enraged medievalist lover, or a muckraking author who blamed her for ruining her life? Perhaps money was the motive, and Constance's sister, jealous of her wealth and fame, was responsible. Or possibly someone at Key News was angry enough—or frightened enough—to commit cold-blooded murder. The one sure thing is that Constance Young made a lot of enemies—and now one of them is Eliza's enemy as well. And the closer she and the Society get to unmasking the murderer, the closer they each get to dying, suddenly . . . and brutally.