Sole Survivor

1 use

Considering Teknologik's suspected connections to political and military power grids, Joe more likely than not would be killed in jail during a meticulously planned altercation with other prisoners well paid to waste him.†

2 uses

For a moment he stared intently at the swooping shadows, which were as amorphous as the molten forms in a Lava lamp, but he could not make the connection.†

2 uses

Muscles continued to atrophy.†

1 use

He was confused by her apparent mysticism, by her sudden transit from beatific calm to superstitious terror, and he was furious that she would lie to him about Nina now, after she had led him to believe, at the cemetery, that she would ultimately tell him the full truth.†

1 use

His reputation was not that of a man who would hire assassins or condone murder in the maintenance or expansion of his empire.†

1 use

A single compact disc had sufficient capacity to contain detailed street maps for all of the contiguous states and Canada.†

1 use

Frantically he retreated into the kitchen, slamming the door as he went, which was pointless because no door—no wall, no steel vault—could delay the boy if he abandoned Louis's body and went incorporeal.†

1 use

She spoke in a low voice, yet every word was bell-note clear and seemed to reverberate through Joe until he gradually began to tremble with the cumulative vibrations.†

1 use

They shouted angrily, as righteous in their outrage as churchgoers might be outraged at a filthy and drunken denizen of the streets who staggered into their service to sag against the chancel rail and vomit on the sanctuary floor.†

1 use

As the copper chimes subsided like the soft dissonant music in a dream of trolls, Joe hurried toward Lisa, and from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the open wine bottle where Charlie Delmann had left it on the island counter.†

1 use

This night, at least, the sober-physician disguise of her severe clothes and steel-rimmed spectacles could not conceal the sparkling depths of Georgine Delmann's natural ebullience.†

1 use

Even in the matter of the species...Well, the two axioms of Darwinian theory—the continuity of nature and adaptable design—have never been validated by a single empirical discovery in nearly a hundred and fifty years.†

1 use

Virtually all yaws result from movements of the rudder, the vertical panel in the tail, but pilots of commercial jets eschew use of the rudder out of consideration for their passengers.†

2 uses

With some Angelenos, those two emotions were as inextricably entwined as the viscera of inoperable Siamese twins.†

1 use

Although the steering wheel was hard under his hands and slick with his cold sweat, although the sound of the engine was familiar, although the freeway was solid under the spinning tires, Joe felt as if he had crossed into another dimension as treacherously amorphous and inimical to reason as the surreal landscapes in Salvador Dalí's paintings.†

1 use

Until the hearing or inquest or whatever it is they have to hold.†

1 use

With nihilistic bitterness that sounded absurd coming from anyone so young, the kid with the buzz cut said, "Screw the system."†

1 use

Their long reach, from Los Angeles to Manassas, and their unnerving omniscience, argued that these were corporations with powerful connections beyond the business world, perhaps to the military.†

4 uses

The gunman, about forty, had large sad eyes, hound-dog eyes, a nose bashed red by the slow blows of two decades of drink, and a sensuous mouth.†

1 use