Alex (presumably short for Alexandra) Graham is an idealistic freelance photojournalist on assignment at a dam collapse in Colorado. She has covered all sorts of foreign and domestic tragedies, including 9/11. She often works along side her good friend, search-and-rescue pro Sarah Logan, and her search dog, Monty. Alex has been sidetracked looking for survivors, and her boss is on the phone yelling about deadlines.

Late in the afternoon, Alex asks a helicopter pilot, Ken, to take her to high ground where she can get shots of the flooded valley and the rescuers at work. He drops her off and will return in an hour to pick her up. When Alex returns to the pick-up site, she hears voices and realizes the chopper she hears, but cannot see, isn’t Ken’s. Alex screams when the mystery chopper shoots Ken down which, of course, attracts the attention of the two men who had been waiting for the other chopper.

They chase her, but give up assuming she’ll soon be buried in the about-to-happen landslide. Alex takes the only way out and jumps into the raging water. She’s eventually rescued, hospitalized, interrogated…and the good? bad? guys begin their hunt to silence her. Alex insists on finding out what really caused the dam collapse and landslide and is soon surprised to see on TV that she is wanted for the crimes. An obvious set-up, but by who?

Some characters (John Logan and Sean Galen) from previous stories by this author are included, and it’s nice to see them at work again. The story moves quickly as Alex and Judd, an ex-commando Sean assigned to protect Alex but who has a bad guy after him, are on the run all over the country, putting the puzzle pieces together and trying to avert the ultimate explosion in the master plan they discovered.

Score another one for Ms. J…and watch out for politicians.