Publisher's Synopsis
The year is 2012. While investigating the heinous death of a prominent evangelist, FBI agent, Leon Safullo is unable to identify the killer through traditional methods of forensic analysis. Simultaneously, Leon learns of the sudden disappearance of Paul Evans, CEO of a major corporation.
Leon is a pragmatic realist whose career is based on interpreting symptoms of aberrant human behavior. The killer contacts Leon with the purpose of challenging the validity of his investigation. Leon perceives the threatening direct communication as a masquerade using digital technology, but fears for the safety of his family.
With the help of an illusionary alter ego named Pearl, Antonio Guzman is a macabre combination of man and spirit, who has infiltrated society as a normal human being. He uses advanced technology combined with microbiology, drugs, and hypnosis to invade his victim's minds and manipulate their unconscious desires. Guzman is in search of "candidates" to possess and convert those who embody "the perfect light."
Paul Evans is a preferred target for Guzman/Pearl. Once a considerate and responsible husband and father, he has fashioned his life according to how he believes others perceive him, which exposes him to the influence of corporate greed, destroys the life of his business partner, and damages his own family.
Guzman invades and breaks down Paul's resistance to acknowledging that dark powers have created his success, and now they want Paul's only son, Matt, in a Faustian exchange. Matt and his sister, Jenny, possess the resistant strain of "Perfect Light." Struggling to reclaim shreds of his identity incrementally taken and possessed by Guzman, Paul and his son flee into a mountain wilderness. Deep in the back country, their lives are further threatened in a deadly encounter with Luther Macke, a rancher, and his two sons on a mountain lion hunt.
In the midst of a violent winter storm in the remote Rocky Mountains, fathers and sons fight for survival against the forces of darkness whose sole objective is to possess them and extinguish the light wherever and in whomever it may exist.
The unfolding evidence and trail of mayhem and murder force Leon to confront his disbelief in paranormal activity as something more than the imagination and projections of a psychopathic killer.
