The bomb that nearly killed Thomas Black went off in a school gymnasium after a Senate candidate had spoken. Amid the carnage, Black enters a tunnel of dreams and hallucinations, oblivion and unconnected memories. People come and go in his hospital room. A woman kisses him. A madman's rant echoes in his mind. When Black is released from the hospital, he faces the twin tragedies that have devastated his life, and the fact that his lovely wife, Kathy, is really gone for good. Or is she? Thomas believes he sees Kathy---as a passenger in a passing truck. Her cell phone, which should be on the bottom of the sea, calls his in the middle of the night. And the explanations investigators give for the plane crash just don't make sense. Now, step by step, Black is beginning to understand what a paranoid, alcoholic former CIA hit man has been trying to tell him about the plane crash, about the death of a reporter's husband, about suspicious things nobody ever gets around to questioning. Suddenly Black is caught up in a web of personal and political lies and something even worse: a plot that is killing everyone it touches.