Dr. Holland Banks is head of the Century Psychiatric Hospital and president of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation and the phrase "Physician Heal Thyself" is foremost at the front of her brain. It's just not Holly's week. She is suffering from terrible nightmares from which she awakens thinking her hand is an evil being. At first, she chalks this up to her inner feelings of being inadequate. The daughter of a high-powered research scientist, she has never measures up to the mad-scientist daddy dearest's hopes for her. She feels she has to continually push be perfect, in her work, in her appearance, and the only place Holly lets down her hair is her home. She could chalk up the odd dreams to the pressure of younger
doctors wanting her position, and that she always fears someone is going to find out she is not as good as she thinks she should be. Except for one thing: someone is stalking her.
She first sees him outside her exercise club, then later as she is coming out of a restaurant from a meeting with her father. The man is handsome in a rugged way, and dressed in a plaid shirt - always a plaid shirt. Her sense of losing her sanity increased as she begins to hear his thoughts. Someone took a shot at her ...she thought it was the stalker, but the police point out she was watching his hands at the time and he was not holding a gun. Was someone else shooting at her? Where they shooting at him?
The riddle of the stalker's identity comes to light at a press conference where her father is announcing his breakthrough in genes altering. Holly fears her father is pushing into areas that are not only outside of what is legal, but way beyond what is ethical, and has warned him not to announce she has anything to do with his work. Despite two warnings, Leyland Banks does just this because he needs Holly's reputation ...and more. When the stalker breaks into the conferences and attacks Leyland, Holly's grip on reality slips even further, for she hears what the stalker is thinking.
The man is admitted to her hospital as a patient, and Holly is strangely drawn to the reporter who seems to have gone mad. She is rattled by his blethering about people who thought they were aliens...very similar to Holly's own dream. As she begins to work with the reporter, she starts to fear something dark and sinister is spreading it tentacles throughout the city. There are strange deaths, people disappearing, and a sniper on the loose racking up nearly two dozen kills ...and at the bottom it Holly's fears her father's work is the cause of it all.
Squires continually pushes the edge in her writing. Keeping the reading off balance and pulling them along on the dark ride. It's a first class nail bitter that you won't be able to put down.