"Four seemingly disparate lives are beginning to unravel... and one person is holding the strings... On the eve of a new satellite launch, the fiancé of NASA project manager Alanna Mendes is apparently killed in a fishing accident...only to be spotted six months later in Silicon Valley... Four years after being caught by Homeland Security hacking into NASA's mainframe computer, Jay Alexei is still blacklisted from the top colleges and computer companies. Now a changed man, he is desperate for a second chance... Once a successful international banking CFO, today David Collier is a broken man who can't afford the expensive treatment for his daughter's rare kidney disorder... When a terrorist group abducts the son of rags-to-riches Steven Galvin, the billionaire is trapped in a nightmare where no amount of money can help him... One person ties them together: the puppet master."--p. [4] of cover.