“Join me in the hot tub.”

Other new arrivals laughed at the greeting, but she and I had a history. The words were a jab, not a tickle. It had been eight years, seven months, and sixteen days since we parted in the Florida sun. Another time, another world, almost literally. Then was Kennedy Space Center, now Mars-on-Earth, Devon Island, home of Haughton Crater and the Haughton-Mars Project, where for half a dozen decades international teams had tested and trained for red planet excursions.

Which wasn’t why she was there. Nor was I.

The “hot tub” had been gouged into…

The sound woke Jordan Hall near four-thirty in the morning when a few errant rays of sunlight stealing over the horizon grayed the sky. It whirred and whined as though a great metal wheel were spinning, spinning, yet neither slowing nor approaching.

Jordan’s wife Maggie slept at his side, oblivious to the noise. Emulating her, or trying, he turned over and closed his eyes, but to no avail. The sound filled his head. There ought to be a law against operating heavy equipment this early in the morning. Probably there was. He should look it up, write a complaint to…

An explosion filled his ears. His chest burned as a dark shade began to fall over his blurring vision. He felt no surprise, only a curious confusion: this wasn’t meant to happen. It was all backwards.

“Sorry, Nate.” Karyn spoke the words as she pulled the trigger, and there might indeed have been sorrow in her voice. But for what? They had won, hadn’t they? Erik was dead, the money was theirs, happily ever after beckoned. Why had she turned the gun on him?

Somehow during his tumble into death, he had time to watch it all again: Erik clutching…

He stood before the television cameras, tossing aside his white cowboy hat, unpinning the star from his chest and dropping it on the ground, and — most unbelievable of all — untying and removing his famous black mask.

“The CDC says it’s okay,” the Lone Ranger told the reporters wearily. “And it’s the end of the trail. I’m retiring.”

A tornado of questions swirled around him, but he waved them off. “Look, folks, I’ve had a good ride. I’ve busted a billion bad guys by now, and while that ain’t as big a number as McDonald’s hamburgers sold, it’s a…

It was a long way down. Brian tossed a rock over the edge and counted the seconds as it plummeted toward the white water rushing through the gorge. One, two, three . . .

The stone, tumbling end over end, vanished from sight, its pale surface blending into the background of the rapids. He had no idea how long it fell. All he knew, really, was the drop was too long and steep to climb down, which was a shame because his Rolex was down there somewhere. …

Between the sirens and the crackling of flames and the bellows of firefighters, the reporter had to holler to make his news heard. He fit the scene well: chiseled features, teeth sparkling in the lights, voice overflowing with grim. He conveyed such pain, anguish, and gravity that it seemed a crying shame Olivia had eyes only for the pile of pennies she’d splashed onto the kitchen table.

Seated at her side, her husband Ethan flipped a page in his Field Guide to Western Mollusks. “I’m sure it was a Cinnamon juga,” he said. “If it was…” Thick paper swished back…

“Permission? Why?” The author, Gravitas Profundo by nom de plume but Bud Fripp in real life, spoke in a western drawl that hissed and spit over the bad connection. “I think Jon Krakauer would be flattered.”

Cell phone to his ear, Martin Piccoli sat sideways on the black leather sofa in his roomy home office, his legs outstretched, his nineteen-year-old tabby cat Thumper curled up on his lap. The office was practically a studio apartment, with a cherry desk, a black ergonomic chair, a couple of dark wing chairs, and oodles of bookcases filled with oodles of books. Outside the…

Someday, Jacey Komarov would be free. Free of Arne Slocum, that is. Until then, she’d be repeatedly bruised, scraped, burned, marooned — maybe even killed a few times — all for the unsatisfying reason that Slocum couldn’t stop tinkering.

Like now.

“I’ll get us out of this,” Slocum assured her in his unassuring seventeen-year-old voice. A skinny little geek with wide, brown eyes and wiry hair, he looked like he’d stuck his finger in a power jack. For all Komarov knew, he probably had.

The “this” from which they required removal involved claim jumpers. The sole survey team for a…