A chilling, only-too-topical thriller from the award-winning author of THE RED SCREAM and ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN. Eleven Texan schoolchildren and their bus driver are captured by a fundamentalist cult, taken to a fortified compound and buried underground, kept alive but only just. Negotiations lead nowhere. Enter Molly Cates, tenacious crime writer with the inside track on the cult leader. But time is running out...Claustrophobic terror alternates with frenzied investigations as the sect's deadline approaches. Post-Waco, post-Oklahoma, the nature of cults is explored to its grim, unrelenting limits in this terrifically paced novel of suspense.