On one of the coldest nights in Minnesota history, the difference between life and death is literally the blink of an eye for Phil Broker, until recently St. Paul's most successful undercover cop. That blink will convey the urgent warning of a comatose man who knows the dark truth binding Broker to a remarkable cast of characters -- a weary anesthesiologist, a brilliant surgeon, a wealthy novelist, his exwife (a reformed exotic dancer), and her unrepentant...

The daughter of ex-cop Phil Broker andex-army major/anti-terrorist operative Nina Pryce, Kit Brokeris no ordinary eight-year-old. She has seen more -- and survived more -- than most grown-ups. And now she has inadvertently invited a nightmare into the lives of those she loves. Phil Broker and his family moved to tiny Glacier Falls, Minnesota, to heal from the psychological wounds they received while helping to avert an inhuman act of terror. But...

It's hot. The snow is gone, the ice is gone -- winter is long forgotten. When the phone wakes Phil Broker at five a.m. on the morning of his forty-eighth birthday -- six months removed from his surviving a January cold snap that (in Absolute Zero) nearly claimed his life -- it's already ninety-two degrees. It's July, and Stillwater, Minnesota, finds itself in the middle of the worst heat wave in local memory. The news on the phone has nothing...

In the last 20 years, Phil Broker has pulled himself together. A good, tough undercover cop in Minnesota, he knows the difference between a sucker punch and a lucky break. And although he's put his Vietnam years behind him, the grown daughter of his old commander has been dogging his heels for months. Nina Pryce is trying to exonerate her dishonorably discharged dead father and-more importantly-find the 10 tons of gold he helped liberate during a...