Chapter 1

The manner of your death never seems important until the moment it arrives.
At that moment, that razor's edge between now and eternity, every detail becomes precious, finite, intricate and unforgettable.
This morning the sun sits wet and slack in the early sky like an orange squeezed and juiced. The heavy slap of the sails and the ghost whispers through the shrouds herald a storm that will blow itself out and leave the ground littered with scraps of life: leaves, paper cups, deflated jellyfish, used condoms, a baby's shoe never worn.
Each piece a whole and perfect silent story.
It is a strange place to die; birth is a forgotten ride at an amusement park.

Not that this sea-side resort had seen much amusement since its heyday of distant decades past. Its boardwalk had disintegrated into that special kind of seediness reserved for old smokey beer taverns, tattoo parlors, and pawn shops. A few head shops kept the young people coming which provided a sort of bohemian air to a place that would have otherwise seemed unacceptable. At least that's how it seemed to Kate Milligan as she stopped in front of a pawn shop with the same name she had written on the back of an envelope. She stepped out of the old Lexus which, even in its diminished state, still looked overdressed considering its surroundings. The car had been a college graduation present from her grandmother and though it now had more sentimental than actual value, she couldn't think of parting with it. She felt the same about the antique brooch she was there to retrieve.

Thirty-five hundred miles to the east, Dutch Air flight 702 from Amsterdam with 62 tourists craving the Canary Island's year round spring-like climate was nearing the La Palma airport. Having rounded the mountain on the lee side of the island, the pilot flew a descending corkscrew pattern that left the mountain again in his path yet with the headwind he needed to land the plane into the airport that lay just before it. Having been cleared to land, he levelled the aircraft's wings for the final approach to runway 02 just as the earth below appeared to slightly shudder and the entire mountain began to slide away from him and disappear into the ocean.