Intensity

At one o'clock in the morning, in a house in Napa Valley, California, Chyna Shepherd, twenty-six, sits at a guest room window, gazing at the moonlit vineyards. A dark and turbulent childhood has taught her to fear strange houses. Now she cannot sleep on the first night in the home of her college friend Laura. Instinct proves reliable. A muffled scream from another room alarms her. Soon it is evident that a homicidal sociopath, Edgler Vess, is intent on killing everyone in the house. Life has taught Chyna to be a survivor, but now she will be tested as never before.

Through a series of astonishing developments, Chyna finds herself inside Vess's motor home - a dungeon and morgue on wheels - without his being aware of her presence. Vess lives for one purpose: to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to seek ever more outrageous experience, to immerse himself in sensation, to live with intensity. And now Chyna is trapped in his dangerous orbit.

At first her sole aim is to get out alive. But when she learns the identity of the killer's next intended victim and when circumstances ensure that only she can save that precious life, she must face the fact that a moral life requires the acceptance of unwanted responsibilities. She discovers depths of courage that she didn't know she possessed - and takes risks beyond any that she ever imagined she could endure.