A collection of stories includes "Home, " a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory Lap, " a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents -- telekinesis and telepathy -- who got to this place the same...

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is forced to face her own demons when CIA agent Catherine Ling, a woman tormented by the kidnapping of her two-year-old son eight years earlier, pleads for her help, knowing that Eve also lost a daughter to an unknown killer.

Deal With The Devil Smoke Jensen has seen the worst that men can do on the lawless frontier. But even the mountain man is not prepared for the outlaw band that strikes Smoke's ranch, kidnapping Sally and the daughter of Smoke's neighbor. Now, the women are gone and a ranch hand and his young daughter are dead. And Pay The Price In Blood... Outlaw Reece Van Arndt is mastermind behind the attack, and he thinks he has Smoke where he wants him: Van Arndt...

Mary Beth Wilson, widowed by Custer's Last Stand, finds a hero--and new love--in Crow chief Brave Wolf when her wagon train is attacked and her child is kidnapped.

Joe Fox, a mountain man who is suspicious of the white settlers encroaching in the West, reluctantly assists a group through the mountains to Oregon, and after he warms up to them--especially young Callie Simmons--a man named Max Starbeau commits theft and murder and kidnaps Callie, causing the settlers to turn to Joe Fox for help.

Dare Macintosh, a professional mercenary who has made it a rule never to mix business and pleasure, is recruited by bestselling novelist Molly Alexander to help find the men who had her kidnapped, and as the danger heats up around them and Molly comes to depend more and more on Dare, he finds himself tempted to toss his rule out the window.

Thirty-two-year-old New Hampshire search-and-rescue worker Delia Hopkins, a soon-to-be-married mother of a five-year-old daughter, begins having strange flashbacks of a forgotten childhood and learns that her father, whom she always believed to be a widower, kidnapped her when she was four--and that her mother is still alive.

"Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat's single mother warned her that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected her mother's fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Marrying into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree has all a woman could ever dream: a loving lawyer husband, two talented young teenage daughters, a new baby boy, a gorgeous home, and every opportunity in the world - until the day Bree awakens...

Ezekiel Blast has a superpower, or a micropower, if you will. He can find lost things. The problem is most people think he steals them. When the police ask for help, though, he may have a chance to redeem himself. What good is finding lost bicycles and hair scrunchies, if when you return them to their owners they think you must have stolen them in the first place? Ezekial Blast's friend Beth thinks there must be some way to use his "micropower" for...