Double Take

Six months after the brutal murder of her husband, the famed psychic August Ransom, Julia Ransom is finally starting to feel like herself again. The media circus around his death nearly broke her. One evening in San Francisco, after dinner with friends, she walks along Pier 39, listens to the tourists and the seals on a barge, and realizes she is content. Then a polite, respectable-looking stranger strikes up a conversation, and in the middle of it he attacks her and hurls her over the railing. FBI Special Agent Cheney Stone happens to be nearby, stretching his legs between courses at a restaurant, and he pulls her out of the water before the bay can swallow her. He also suspects that the attack is tied to her husband's murder. He appoints himself her protector and begins digging back into August Ransom's death. Thousands of miles away in Maestro, Virginia, Sheriff Dixon Noble is still grieving his wife, Christie, who disappeared three years ago. Just as his life has begun to settle, he hears about a San Francisco woman named Charlotte Pallack, who looks uncannily like her. Dix is certain it cannot be Christie, but he has to see for himself and flies west. There he and Cheney soon cross paths. FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock, whose San Francisco contacts prove vital, join them in untangling who Charlotte Pallack really is and who wants Julia dead. The investigation pulls the four into a murky world of psychics, mind benders, frauds, and communication with the dead. As the body count climbs, they are fighting for answers and for their own survival. Double Take is part of Catherine Coulter's FBI Thriller series, and Dix returns from Point Blank.