The Forbidden Door is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Dean Koontz
Excerpt from The Night Window by Dean Koontz © copyright 2018 by Dean Koontz
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Title page art from an original photograph by Freeimages.com/Roger Kirby
A signed, limited edition has been privately produced by Charnel House. charnelhouse.com
This book contains an excerpt of the forthcoming title The Night Window by Dean Koontz. The excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming book.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Koontz, Dean R. (Dean Ray)
Title: The forbidden door : a Jane Hawk novel / Dean Koontz.
Description: New York : Bantam Books, [2018] | Series: Jane Hawk ; 4
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023805| ISBN 9780525483700 (hardback) | ISBN 9780525483922 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Psychological. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3561.O55 F65 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023805
Ebook ISBN 9780525483922
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Scott Biel
Cover image: Claudio Marinesco
v5.3.2
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part 1: Desperate Heart
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Part 2: While Jane Sleeps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part 3: Reptiles
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 4: Whispering Armageddon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part 5: Plain Jane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part 6: Tragedy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Dedication
Author’s Note
Excerpt from The Night Window
By Dean Koontz
About the Author
For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate…
—RUDYARD KIPLING, “For All We Have and Are”
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and, baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder.
—PAUL SIMON, “The Boy in the Bubble”
Creating a neural [brain] lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines.
—ELON MUSK
1
AT FIRST THE BREEZE WAS no more than a long sigh, breathing through the Texas high country as though expressing some sadness attendant to Nature herself.
They were sitting in the fresh air, in the late-afternoon light, because they assumed that the house was bugged, that anything they said within its rooms would be monitored in real time.
Likewise, they trusted neither the porches nor the barn, nor the horse stables.
When they had something important to discuss, they retreated to the redwood lawn chairs under the massive oak tree in the backyard, facing a flatness of grassland that rolled on to the distant horizon and, for all that the eye could tell, continued to eternity.
As Sunday afternoon became evening, Ancel and Clare Hawk sat in those chairs, she with a martini, he with Macallan Scotch over ice, steeling themselves for an upcoming television program they didn’t want to watch but that might change their lives.
“What bombshell can they be talking about?” Clare wondered.
“It’s TV news,” Ancel said. “They pitch most every story like it’ll shake the foundations of the world. It’s how they sell soap.”
Clare watched him as he stared out at the deep, trembling grass and the vastness of sky as if he never tired of them and saw some new meaning in them every time he gave them his attention. A big man with a weathered face and work-scarred hands, he looked as if his heart might be as hard as bone, though she’d never known one more tender.
After thirty-four years of marriage, they had endured hardships and shared many successes. But now—and perhaps for as long as they yet might have together—their lives were defined by one blessing and one unbearable loss, the birth of their only child, Nick, and his death at the age of thirty-two, the previous November.
Clare said, “I’m feeling like it’s more than selling soap, like it’s some vicious damn twist of the knife.”
Ancel reached out with his left hand, which she held tightly. “We thought it all out, Clare. We have plans. We’re ready for whatever.”
“I’m not ready to lose Jane, too. I’ll never be ready.”
“It won’t happen. They’re who they are, she’s who she is, and I’d put my money on her every time.”
Just when the faded-denim sky began to darkle toward sapphire overhead and took upon itself a glossy sheen, the breeze quickened and set the oak tree to whispering.
Their daughter-in-law, Jane Hawk, who was as close to them as any real daughter might have been, had recently been indicted for espionage, treason, and seven counts of murder, crimes that she hadn’t committed. She would be the sole subject of this evening’s Sunday Magazine, a one-hour TV program that rarely devoted more than ten minutes to a profile of anyone, either president or pop singer. The most-wanted fugitive in America and a media sensation, Jane was labeled “the beautiful monster” by the tabloids, a cognomen used in promos for the forthcoming special edition of Sunday Magazine.
Ancel said, “Her indictment by some misled grand jury, now this TV show, all the noise about it…you realize what it must mean?”
“Nothing good.”
“Well, but I think she’s got evidence that’ll destroy the sons of bitches, and they know she’s got it. They’re desperate. If she finds a reporter or someone in the Bureau who maybe she can trust—”
“She tried before. The bigger the story, the fewer people she can trust. And this is as big as a story gets.”
“They’re desperate,” Ancel insisted. “They’re throwin’ all they got at her, tryin’ to turn the whole country against her, make her a monster no one’ll ever believe.”
“And what then?” Clare worried. “How does she have any hope if the whole country’s against her?”
“Because it won’t be.”
“I don’t know how you can be so sure.”
“The way they demonize her, this hysteria they ginned up in the media—it’s too much piled on top of too much. People sense it.”
“Those who know her, but that’s not a world.”
“People all over, they’re talkin’ about what the real story might be, whether maybe she’s bein’ set up.”
“What people? All over where?”
“All over the Internet.”
“Since when do you spend five minutes on the Internet?”
“Since this latest with her.”
The sun appeared to roll below the horizon, although in fact the horizon rolled away from the sun. In the instant when all the remaining light of day was indirect across the red western sky, the breeze quickened again and became a wind aborning, as if all were a clockwork.
As the looser leaves of the live oak were shaken down, Clare let go of Ancel’s hand and covered her glass, and he shielded his.
There was no privacy in the house, and they weren’t finished counseling each other in matters of grief and hope, preparing for the affront that would be the TV program. The wind brought the dark, and the dark brought a chill, but the sea of stars was a work of wonder and a source of solace.
2
TEN MILES FROM HAWK RANCH, Egon Gottfrey heads the operation to take Ancel and Clare Hawk into custody and ensure their fullest cooperation in the search for their daughter-in-law.
Well, custody is too formal a word. Each member of Gottfrey’s team carries valid Department of Homeland Security credentials. They also possess valid ID for the NSA and the FBI, though they work at those two agencies only on paper. They receive three salaries and earn three pensions, ostensibly to preserve and defend the United States, while in fact working for the revolution. The leaders of the revolution make sure that their foot soldiers are well rewarded by the very system they are intent on overthrowing.
Because of Egon Gottfrey’s successful career in Homeland, he was approached to join the Techno Arcadians, the visionaries who conduct the secret revolution. He is now one of them. And why not? He doesn’t believe in the United States anyway.
The Techno Arcadians will change the world. They will pacify contentious humanity, end poverty, create Utopia through technology.
Or so the Unknown Playwright would have us believe.
The Hawks will not be arrested. Gottfrey and his crew will take possession of them. Neither attorneys nor courts will be involved.
Having arrived in Worstead, Texas, shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon, Egon Gottfrey is bored by the town within half an hour of checking into the Holiday Inn.
In 1896, when this jerkwater became a center through which the region’s farms and ranches shipped their products to market, it had been called Sheepshear Station, because of the amount of baled wool
that passed through on the way to textile mills.