Seattle billionaire and software titan Jeff Pepper couldn't have chosen a worse day to check up on the research project he's been funding at the university hospital for more than a decade. When gunmen move in, seizing control of the building in their search for a previously unknown weapon, Jeff is caught in the middle of a nerve-wracking hostage situation, one in which he is anall-too-valuable pawn. As tensions mount and the body count rises, his only hope for survival rests on the shoulders of Nick, a deadbeat kidtrapped in another part of the building. Working with law-enforcement officials outside, Nick must guide a special team through the locked-down facility and help them save as many lives as possible, while Jeff Pepper uses every negotiating trick up his sleeve to see that he and his fellow captives make it out alive.(Cover artwork by Stephen Emond)