The Forbidden Door Read online

  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

  ep

  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 36

  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.