Past midnight, Chyna Shepherd, twenty- six, gazed out a moonlit
window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home
of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous
sociopath, Edgler Forman Vess, has entered the house, intent on
killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventure,"
Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immense
himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to
live with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.
Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety
and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first
her sole aim is to get out alive-until, by chance, she learns the
identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only
she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning
beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource
she has to save an endangered girl—as moment by moment, the
terrifying threat Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.