Description: Chapter 1 Turning into the hotel parking lot, Blake Whittaker guided his black sedan into the nearest available space and killed the engine. Instead of making an immediate grab for the bag in the passenger''s seat, he simply sat, staring into the distance. It was amazing how things had changed since he''d last been in Port Rock. Almost seventeen years had passed since he''d last set foot in the small Maine fishing village. And while the old familiar landmarks were still in place, a lot of things looked different. The hotel, for instance, was new. Back when he was a kid the oceanfront acreage overlooking the bay was undeveloped, offering an unobstructed view of the open water and the small island that lay about a mile offshore. Little Mer Island , he thought. That was where he''d be heading first thing tomorrow. To get there he''d have to rent a skiff, crossing over the wide-open waters of the bay. A flush prickled Blake''s skin as his heart sped up. Despite the humidity permeating the warm summer night, he shivered. He hated deep water of any kind. Aside from a shower, he did his best to stay far away from the stuff. It didn''t matter if it only filled a swimming pool, or the wide-open ocean. The less he saw of it, the better. Mouth going bone-dry, his grip on the steering wheel tightened as a series of images flashed through his mind. For a brief second he wasn''t a thirty-three-year-old man, but a four-year-old boy facing an insanely furious woman filling a deep old-fashioned claw-foot tub with ice-cold water. Forcing himself back toward calm, Blake blew out a few quick hard puffs, filling his lungs and then quickly expelling the air. The strain of clenching his jaw made his teeth hurt. The last thing he needed was a full-blown panic attack while sitting in the parking lot. Thank God the lot was abandoned. There was no one around at such a late hour to see him melt down. Catching hold of his fear and forcing himself to stuff it away, he slowly uncurled his fingers. A low curse slipped between his numb lips. "Damn." Just thinking about his mother made him twitch, setting his nerves on edge. He hadn''t expected that memory to come crawling out of nowhere and ambush him. He did his best to forget those petrifying moments when his mom was drunk on vodka and raging with malice. Men. She hated them. Every last blasted one and . . . And some things are best left alone , Blake reminded himself. Remembering his mother was like sticking his hand into a den of poisonous snakes. He was bound to get bitten, but he just couldn''t stop prodding the deadly reptiles. He''d better stop it or he was going to get bitten. Badly. Coming back to Port Rock certainly wasn''t helping matters. When he''d finally gotten old enough to leave it, he hadn''t intended to come back. Not ever. At the age of seventeen he''d gotten the hell out, going as far away as he could. A one-way bus ticket and a suitcase was all he had to his name. If he hadn''t just joined the army, he would''ve had no place to go at the end of the trip. Blake rubbed his burning eyes. To be sane himself, to continue being sane, he had to quit tearing at the scars marking old wounds. There were a lot of ghosts lingering in his past, a lot of skeletons shoved into his family''s closets. Shut them, bolt them, and go on. That was the way he''d always gotten things done. As a kid he''d put on the stiff upper lip, taken the beatings, and gone about the business of living as best he could. He''d survived. Sighing again, he shifted his body in the uncomfortable seat, feeling the cramp in his legs. The three-and-a-half-hour trip through a massive thunderstorm had taken its toll on his nerves. Palm rasping against a day''s growth of whiskers, he reached for the cup balanced between his splayed legs. He took a gulp of its contents: unsweetened black coffee. It was cold and tasted like shit. As much as he didn''t like coming back to Port Rock, he had a job to do. Not a hard one. Not even difficult. Just ask a few questions, poke around a little. It wasn''t rocket science. But it was top secret. As a special agent, Blake presently worked in the A51-ASD division of the FBI. Had it not been a highly covert organization, the A51 would have been familiar enough to tip off most Americans as to its purpose. After all, Area 51 was the nickname for a military base presently located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States. Supposedly the base''s primary purpose was the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. That was somewhat true. And anyone not presently situated under a rock knew about the intense secrecy surrounding the base, one that had made it a popular subject among conspiracy theorists who held a belief in the existence of alien life on Earth. The crackpots weren''t wrong, either. Blake Whittaker knew for a fact the federal government took the existence of aliens very seriously. The genesis of the current operations stemmed from an incident in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. At that time, the military had supposedly recovered alien craft and corpses, purportedly held under lock and key, never to be revealed to the public. It was absolutely true in every respect. The ASD had been created to cover not only future occurrences of possible alien activity, but also to investigate other incidents deemed alien, paranormal, or hereby inexplicable. Curious. Strange. Bizarre. You name it, the ASD had an agent on it. And that was why he was in Port Rock. Because something curious had taken not only a strange turn, but a bizarre one as well. It had all begun in the 1950s, when an intense concentration of electromagnetic energy was located in the Mediterranean Sea. There was no rhyme or reason why the energy should be at that precise spot, or what caused it. Using the latest technology in deep-sea exploration, scientists had yet to discover the source. Given the location of the disturbance, most theories ranged from a geothermal field due to volcanic activity, to some sort of alien homing signal or beacon. For the most part, the energy seemed to be harmless, a phenomenon never to be explained. Naval ships in the area monitored it, and no changes had been reported in the last sixty years. Whatever it was simply was. And then something happened. From the data he had, Whittaker knew that an undersea salvage group, working under the name of Recoveries, Inc., had moved into the area. The outfit had recently filed in federal court for salvage rights for what they claimed to be the lost civilization of Ishaldi. Nothing unusual there. Treasure hunters regularly hit the Mediterranean in search of everything from ancient Egyptian barges to Spanish warships to World War II aircraft. After all, for the three quarters of the globe, the Mediterranean Sea was the uniting element and the center of world history. What had exactly occurred was still to be explained. During the first dive, tragedy had struck, some kind of seismic activity taking place deep beneath the water. The resulting quake was strong enough to be detected by hydrophones, and was unlike anything scientists had ever heard through decades of listening. The undersea quake had also claimed a victim. Jake Massey, the archaeologist leading the recovery efforts, had been reported missing at sea. A month had passed since that fateful day and his body had yet to be recovered. More interesting than the quake and the regrettable loss of life was the fact that the former low-level energy field had gone haywire. The electromagnetic field had suddenly tripled in strength. Its signal--if it could be called that--had begun to interfere with radar and radio transmissions, seemingly swallowing up everything electronic in a single gulp. It was like a big black hole had suddenly opened at the bottom of the sea. No ship could get within ten miles of the location without interference. As the area was one of the most heavily sailed shipping lanes in the world, it was a pain in the ass for seacraft to detour around. In the scheme of things, Blake''s job was fairly simple. He''d been sent to question Massey''s partner about the incident. The feds wanted to know if Randall''s crew had seen, heard, or encountered something outside the norm during their time beneath the water. Given that the seismic activity had taken place at a depth of more than three miles beneath the water, Whittaker sincerely doubted they would have any useful information to offer. Blake grimaced, tossing the empty cup onto the floor on the passenger''s side. Flicking on an overhead light, he consulted his notes, a chicken scratch of random information on a pocket-sized pad. According to intelligence, Kenneth Randall presently lived on Little Mer with his wife, Tessa. Since the loss of Jake Massey, the group had suspended all salvage efforts and the company had gone inactive. An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard, which monitored recovery efforts in the Mediterranean, had ruled Massey the victim of an unfortunate accident. Still, the A51-ASD had a job to do. And that meant sending an agent out to ask a few questions and poke around a little. His conclusions on the matter would be the deciding factor on whether a follow-up was warranted or if the matter was marked closed. The barest trace of a smile crossed Blake''s lips. Most of the incidents he looked into turned out to be bogus, of no real scientific value. He''d worked for the agency for almost five years and had yet to see anything unusual. . Logic and science could usually explain away most of the reported phenomena. Tucking his pad away, Blake ran his fingers through his hair. He caught a brief glimpse of half his

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