Last Light
From bestselling author Dean Koontz comes an ebook original novella, the first of two tales that pave the way for his new novel, ASHLEY BELL. A woman with a good heart and a troubling gift. A man with a twisted soul and a terrifying talent. In this literal war of wills, only one can survive.With just a touch, Makani Hisoka-O’Brien can see the deepest secrets that others conceal—and it frightens her. There’s danger in the terrible knowledge that floods her mind and haunts her conscience.With just a touch, Rainer Sparks can learn the biggest problems that others bear—and it thrills him. There’s profit to be made making problems go away, by any means . . . including murder.In a place as big as Southern California, these two might have never met and discovered one another’s chilling abilities. But good and evil have a way of colliding . . . with shattering consequences.
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Harper
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
First published in the USA in 2015 by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, A division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2015
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Dean Koontz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780008163075
Version: 2015-08-28
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1: Look but Donât Touch
Chapter 2: Desperate to Escape Hawaii
Chapter 3: Inside the Beautiful Man
Chapter 4: Taking the Drop
Chapter 5: More Alone Than Any Girl Has Ever Been
Chapter 6: On the Die
Chapter 7: Round One
Chapter 8: Named for the Wind
Chapter 9: Where, Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?
Chapter 10: You Donât Find Life by Fleeing from It
Chapter 11: Beauty Sleeps
Chapter 13: Round Two
Chapter 14: Thunder Crusher
Chapter 15: Who Are We If We Are Not Us?
Chapter 16: Round Three
Authorâs Note
About Dean Koontz
By Dean Koontz
About the Publisher
When Makani Hisoka-OâBrien met the murderer, she thought he was a nice guy, perhaps just the one with whom she might want to share her life.
That warm Wednesday in August, the Southern California sky was as wide as the universe, as deep as infinity, as blue as Makaniâs eyes, and she could no more resist the call of the ocean than she could switch off her compulsion to breathe.
Her mother, Kiku, insisted that Makani had been born in the ocean, even though in fact she had been born on the island of Oahu, in a Honolulu hospital. What her sweet mahuakine meant was that Makani had been conceived in the sea, in the gently breaking surf, on a deserted and moonlit beach. Makani had pieced this saucy truth together from a series of little things her parents had said over the years and from looks they exchanged and meaningful smiles they shared. Although she was a native Hawaiian, Kiku had been taught reserve and discretion by her traditionalist Japanese mother; she would not speak of lovemaking in any but the most oblique fashion. Heeding the call of the surf, the bed of her conception, Makani drove her street rod, a glossy black â54 Chevrolet Bel Air that had been chopped and shaved and peaked and frenched and sparkled, to Balboa Peninsula, the land mass that shielded Newport Harbor from the open sea. The Chevy purred like a panther, because she had dropped into it a GM Performance Parts high-output 383ci small-block V-8. She wasnât a street racer, but if California was ever plagued by road bandits, she would be able to outrun them all.
She parked in a residential neighborhood half a block from the peninsula-point park, in the shade of an ancient podocarpus. Her surfboard hung in a custom sling in the backseat, safer than she was in a driverâs shoulder harness. She zippered open the vinyl, freed the board, and set off for the beach.
In a bikini, she was a flame that drew young men as surely as a porch lamp at night enchanted moths, but this day was not about boys. This day was about the sea and its power, its beauty, its challenge. In medium-length boardshorts, a sports bra, and a white T-shirt, Makani presented herself as a dedicated boardhead, warning off the testosterone crowd.
One of the most famous surfing destinations in the world was the Wedge, formed by a pristine beach and the breakwater of stacked boulders that protected the entrance channel to Newport Harbor. On other days, when the waves were behemoths, smoking in from a South Pacific storm a few thousand miles away, surfers were in danger of being driven onto the rocks. Some had died there.
Makani walked the wet, compacted sand up-peninsula for about a hundred fifty yards, giving the Wedge the respect it deserved. The waves were maybe eight to nine feet, glassy, pumping nicely, in sets of four and five, with calmer conditions between. She waited for the sea to slack off briefly before she paddled out to the lineup. Other surfers straddled their boards, anticipating the next swell, all of them guys and good citizens who kept their distance from one another and were unlikely to snake someone elseâs wave. One surfer, one wave was a natural law.
