**Part 1**
My name is Sarah Whitmore, and at twenty-nine years old, lying in Examination Room 4 at New York Presbyterian Hospital, I thought my life was finally going to end. I was eight months pregnant with my first child, shivering in a paper gown while battling severe preeclampsia, staring at the rhythmic flutter of my baby boy’s heartbeat on...
Part 1
My name is Claire Montgomery, and at twenty-eight years old, carrying my unborn child in a high-risk pregnancy, I thought the worst pain I could ever endure was heartbreak. I was wrong.
The monitors inside Room 402 at Chicago Memorial beeped with a frantic cadence as the ultrasound technician stepped into the hallway to grab emergency saline. That was...
Part 1
At 9:47 PM on Christmas Eve, thirty-two weeks pregnant and sitting alone in our fifty-fourth-floor Manhattan penthouse, my entire world turned to ash.
My name is Avery Caldwell. As an orphan from rural Ohio who worked double shifts at diners to earn a pediatric oncology research fellowship at Columbia University, I had fought tooth and nail for every scrap...
Part 1
My name is Maya Hayes, and two minutes ago, I believed I had the perfect life. I was a thirty-year-old trauma nurse in suburban Boston, eight months pregnant with my first child, waiting for my husband David to return from an emergency surgical rotation. Then the nursery monitor on my nightstand didn't just broadcast my baby's soft breathing—it...
Parte 1
El monitor cardíaco seguía emitiendo pitidos rítmicos y el sudor se me pegaba a la frente mientras sostenía a mi hijo recién nacido, Ethan, contra mi pecho. Soy Jessica Coleman. Hace menos de veinte minutos, había traído una vida al mundo tras catorce angustiosas horas de parto en el Centro Médico St. Luke. Estaba físicamente agotada, temblorosa y...
I am Sarah Vance, 36 years old, a veteran Naval Intelligence officer who traded a desk at Langley for high-stakes maritime interdiction. Right now, I’m freefalling into sixty-mile-deep pitch-black ocean water. Five seconds ago, a massive freighter crew member slammed a heavy iron pipe across my back, shattering my balance and breaking two of my ribs. The agonizing pain...
I am Captain Evelyn "Lynx" Reed, lead marksman for the 75th Ranger Recon Detachment. People call me a ghost, a cold-blooded killing machine who only cares about target acquisition. They’re wrong. I kill so the boys in the mud can go home to their kids.
The radio in my hide-site shrieked with static, breaking the silence of the valley.
"Mayday, Mayday!...
My name is Master Sergeant Jack Vance, and if you saw me an hour ago, you’d have thought I was just another broke veteran serving mystery meat at FOB Viper. Nobody looks twice at the guy scooping green beans. That was the point. I’m JSOC-attached SEAL team, planted in this hellhole mess hall to catch an insider selling our...
I'm Marcus Reed, and five minutes ago, I was just a civilian contractor walking through the dusk air at Davis-Monthan Airfield. Now, I'm bleeding out on the oil-stained floor of a dark maintenance bay, staring up at the terrifying, tank-killing silhouette of an A-10 Warthog.
Vance, a man I once trusted with my life in Iraq, slammed me face-first into...
Part 1
My name is Elena Mercer, a thirty-one-year-old pediatric nurse from suburban Chicago, and thirty seconds ago, I realized my husband was orchestrating my murder.
I sat frozen behind the steering wheel of my Volvo SUV at a deserted red light on Route 59. In the backseat, my six-year-old daughter, Lily, was curled up under her fleece blanket, sound asleep....
