Dean R. Koontz
Cold Fire
PRAISE FOR COLD FIRE BY DEAN R. KOONTZ
"Irresistible. COLD FIRE doesn't disappoint."
— Newsweek
"A swift, psychospiritual adventure … offers plenty of surging suspense and sentiment."
— Kirkus Reviews
"[Koontz's] name has come to be recognized as a guarantee of a good, solid read. COLD FIRE is his most enjoyable book to date."
— London Times
"Unforgettable. A stunning showdown."
— Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune
"Koontz is an expert at creating believable characters."
— Detroit News and Free Press
"A master storyteller, sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking, but always riveting. His characters sparkle with life. And his fast-paced plots are wonderfully fiendish, taking unexpected twists and turns, yet in the end they are satisfyingly logical."
— San Diego Union
"Suspenseful, entertaining … vivid storytelling [that] offers the reader an unsettling insight into deep trauma and the aftereffects of unresolved sorrow."
— Sunday Cape Cod Times
"A unique, spellbinding novel with depth, sensitivity and personality."
— Boston Herald
"An exciting, well-conceived story … filled with spectacular descriptive scenes … creative and captivating."
— Lansing State Journal
"COLD FIRE is a page-turner, and Koontz's prose is as easy to take as lemonade on a hot summer day."
— Sunday Journal (Flint, Michigan)
"Koontz strikes a chord in COLD FIRE, latest of [his] string of darkly brilliant novels. You'll revel in this adventure tale."
— Jackson Sun
"Compelling … steadily building suspense that defies any attempt to put it down."
— Macon Telegraph
"Fresh, hopeful … a charm all its own … that propels you willingly from page to page."
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A cool sizzler that'll grab you from the start and won't let go until you either finish it or are overcome by exhaustion. I thoroughly enjoyed it."
— Duncan Times (Duncan, Oklahoma)
"Hard to put down. [Koontz's] ability to breathe life into his characters and to weave a web of suspense has resulted in a book that will cause many sleepless nights."
— Lexington Herald-Leader
"From its opening line to its thrilling climax, [COLD FIRE] is a mesmerizing tale that grabs the reader and refuses to let go, a breathtaking experience."
— Orange County Register
"Koontz can write characterization rings around [other popular novelists]."
— Birmingham News
"In COLD FIRE Koontz shows off his style. Unforgettable."
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Koontz's imagination is not only as big as the Ritz, it is also as wild as an unbroken stallion. Gripping."
— Los Angeles Times
"Koontz does it so well!"
— Baton Rouge Morning Advocate
"The tight, quixotic storyline of COLD FIRE is supported by deep characterization and a most developed sense of place and pace. He is the reader's friend, in that he can always be counted upon to deliver."
— Fear
"His prose mesmerizes … gut-wrenching clarity. It's in the descriptions of emotional states — from love to despair — that Koontz consistently hits bull's-eyes, evoking reactions of 'Yes! I know exactly how that feels!' "
— Arkansas Democrat
"Likable characters, thrilling plot, and nonstop suspense."
— Daily Reflector (Greenville, North Carolina)
"A stunner … things are never what they seem … characters of extraordinary depth and sensitivity."
— Californian
"An exceptional novelist … a top-notch thriller."
— Lincoln Star-Journal
"Koontz adeptly builds tension, fully fleshing out his characters and establishing a mesmerizing plot. A galloping page-turner."
— Chattanooga News-Free Press
"Well-written, hard to put down."
— New Britain Herald
"Wonder-filled, powerful suspense."
— Plainview Daily Herald
To Nick and Vicky Page, who know how to be good neighbors and friends — if they would only try.
Dick and Pat Karlan, who are among the few in "Hollywood" who own their souls — and always will.
My life is better for having known you all.
Weirder, but better!
Part One
THE FRIEND
In the real world
as in dreams,
nothing is quite
what it seems.
Life without meaning
cannot be borne.
We find a mission
to which we're sworn
— or answer the call
of Death's dark horn.
Without a gleaning
of purpose in life,
we have no vision,
we live in strife,
— or let blood fall
on a suicide knife.
AUGUST 12
1
Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was coming. During the night he dreamed of being pursued across a field by a flock of large blackbirds that shrieked around him in a turbulent flapping of wings and tore at him with hooked beaks as precision-honed as surgical scalpels. When he woke and was unable to breathe, he shuffled onto the balcony in his pajama bottoms to get some fresh air. But at nine-thirty in the morning, the temperature, already ninety degrees, only contributed to the sense of suffocation with which he had awakened.
A long shower and a shave refreshed him.
The refrigerator contained only part of a moldering Sara Lee cake. It resembled a laboratory culture of some new, exquisitely virulent strain of botulinus. He could either starve or go out into the furnace heat.
The August day was so torrid that birds, beyond the boundaries of bad dreams, preferred the bowers of the trees to the sun-scorched open spaces of the southern California sky; they sat silently in their leafy shelters, chirruping rarely and without enthusiasm. Dogs padded cat-quick along sidewalks as hot as griddles. No man, woman or child paused to see if an egg would fry on the concrete, taking it as a matter of faith.
After eating a light breakfast at an umbrella-shaded table on the patio of a seaside cafe in Laguna Beach, he was enervated again and sheathed in a dew of perspiration. It was one of those rare occasions when the Pacific could not produce even a dependable mild breeze.